S! 


THE  RISING  TEMPER 
OF  THE  EAST 


Mahatma  Gandhi 
Watching  the  World  Go  By 


THE  RISING  TEMPER 
OF  THE  EAST 

Sounding  the  Human  Note  in  the  World-Wide 
Cry  for  Land  and  Liberty 


BY 
FRAZIER  HUNT 


The  toad  beneath  the  harrow  knows 
Exactly  where  each  tooth-point  goes. 
The  butterfly  beside  the  road 
Preaches  contentment  to  that  toad. 
— Kipling. 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright  1922 
The  Bobbs-Merrill  Company 


Printed  vn  the  United  States  of  America 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWORTH   &   CO 

BOOK   MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN,    N.    Y. 


To 
MY  FATHER 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Grateful    acknowledgment    is    hereby    made    to 
Hearst's  International   Magazine,   The   Century 
and  Good  Housekeeping  for  permission  to  repub- 
lish certain  portions  of  this  book. 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  called  this  book  The  Rising  Temper  of 
the  East  because  in  it  I  have  attempted  to  show 
not  only  the  awakening  of  a  billion  backward  peo- 
ples of  the  Old  World  but  to  sound  a  note  of 
warning  to  the  white  Christian  East.  I  have  tried 
to  tell  the  human  story  of  the  rising  winds  of  new 
freedom,  the  coming  of  new  ideas,  the  birth  of 
new  hopes,  the  whole  renaissance  of  the  ancient 
East. 

The  white  man's  domination  of  the  billion  men 
of  the  East  by  force  must  cease.  No  longer 
can  our  culture  and  our  civilization  be  carried  to 
backward,  ancient  peoples  on  the  vehicle  of  force. 
If  there  is  a  "white  man's  burden"  it  must  in  the 
future  be  borne  on  other  shoulders  than  those  that 
carry  bayonets. 

Everywhere  throughout  the  East  there  are 
danger  signals  flashing  their  warning  to  the  con- 
quering West.  The  ruling,  the  domineering,  the 
looting,  must  cease.  If  the  West  were  wise  it 
would  shift  its  course  now  while  there  is  still 
time.  If  it  blindly  stumbles  on,  ignoring  these 
danger  signals,  the  day  will  soon  come  when  the 
work  and  the  profits  of  four  hundred  years  will 
be  swept  away. 

There  are  many  men,  wise  to  the  East,  who  to- 


PEEFACE 

Say  not  only  feel  that  this  will  happen  but  that 
once  freed  from  the  heel  of  the  white  "West,  and 
with  the  adoption  of  the  science  and  culture  of 
modern  warfare,  these  billion  men  will  seek 
race  revenge,  and  that  again  black,  brown  and 
yellow  hordes  may  swoop  over  white  Europe  and 
its  great  outposts  of  white  culture. 

But  they  fail  to  take  cognizance  of  a  great  new 
power  that  is  abroad  in  the  world — the  power  of 
the  universal  social  unrest  that  is  working  within 
the  borders  of  each  country.  Labor  leaders  in 
Calcutta  are  dreaming  exactly  the  same  hopes  as 
labor  leaders  in  Manchester;  social  revolutionists 
in  Tokyo  are  preaching  the  same  doctrines  as 
the  revolutionists  of  Rome ;  organizers  of  the  cot- 
ton spinners  of  Shanghai  are  using  the  same  argu- 
ments as  organizers  among  the  cotton  workers  of 
Fall  River. 

The  world  unrest  is  world-wide  unrest.  No 
Great  Wall  of  China  can  exclude  it:  no  desert  is 
too  wide  for  it  to  cross,  or  no  ocean  too  deep. 
New  winds  of  freedom  are  blowing  over  every 
country  and  into  every  comer  of  the  globe. 

For  the  moment  these  winds  in  the  East  are 
winds  of  nationalism — self-determination — apoliti- 
cal freedom.  They  will  bring  an  end  to  the  physi- 
cal, political  rule  of  the  white  West  over  the  East. 
And  then  they  will  change  to  winds  of  social 
unrest — and  the  energies  and  hopes  of  these  bil- 
lion men  will  be  turned  from  white  hate  to  inter- 
nal struggles.     There  will  be  no  time  for  con- 


PEEFACE 

quest   or   revenge,   no   heart   for   wars    of   ag- 
gression. 

This  is  the  story  that  I  would  tell  in  these 
following  chapters — stories  of  conunon  peoples 
and  their  leaders  struggling  up  toward  the  light. 
I  have  no  theories  to  prove — no  pet  ideas  to  ad- 
vance. I  would  set  down  between  covers  these 
pages  of  world  news — facts  of  progress,  garnered 
in  years  of  travel  and  investigation. 

I  saw  a  great  new  East  being  born  before  my 
very  eyes.  It  was  a  new  East  of  hope  emerging 
from  a  tired,  ancient,  hopeless  world.  It  was  a 
restless,  moving  world  that  I  saw.  Books  have 
been  written  about  The  Unchanging  East,  but 
that  is  not  what  I  found ;  it  was  a  Changing  East 
that  greeted  me  everywhere. 

Its  leaders  interested  me  and  its  people  fas- 
cinated me.  Its  revolt  against  the  West  and 
against  its  own  traditions  and  time-worn  customs 
thrilled  me,  just  as  the  Russian  revolution  first 
thrilled  me  in  North  Russia  and  then  in  Petrograd 
and  Moscow  and  later  in  Siberia.  Everywhere  it 
has  been  the  same  story — millions  awakening 
from  the  slumber  of  centuries. 

I  have  tried  to  chronicle  things  here  just  as  I 
found  them — to  tell  simply,  directly  and  honestly 
the  great  pulsing,  human  story  of  Gandhi  and 
India,  of  the  Near  East,  China,  Japan,  Korea, 
Siberia,  the  Philippines — and,  as  well,  the  story 
of  our  oAvn  imperialistic  ventures  in  Haiti  and 
Mexico.    I  have  tried  to  tell  of  Gandhi,  the  Man, 


PREFACE 

as  well  as  Gandhi,  the  Leader !  I  have  attempted 
to  paint  Kagawa,  the  young  liberal  leader  of 
Japan,  just  as  vividly  and  humanly  as  he  ap- 
peared to  me  that  December  day  when  I  talked  to 
him.  I  have  tried  to  tell  of  common  peoples  and 
common  hopes  rather  than  of  great  international 
movements  and  world  politics. 

If  I  have  even  partly  succeeded  in  lifting  the 
veil  that  is  drawn  over  the  hidden  East  and  have 
shown  that  here  are  common  peoples  living  and 
fighting  and  dreaming  of  better  things,  then  I 
will  be  more  than  satisfied. 

New  York,  F.  H. 

Feb.  1,  1922. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    Gandhi  and  His  India 15 

II  The  New  Religious  Nationalism  of  the  East    .    42 

III  Young   China 66 

IV  Kagawa  of  Kobe — the  Story  of  the  New  Japan    .    93 
V    Struggling    Korea 115 

VI    Ivan  the  Jap  Killer 127 

VII    White     Australia 150 

VIII    Our    Own    Little    India 168 

IX    Whose    Country    Is    Haiti? 189 

X  Our  Restless  Brothers  below  the  Rio  Grande  .  204 

XI    The  Lamp  Bearers 226 

XII  The  World's  Under-dogs — a  Conclusion    .     .     .  241 


The  Rising  Temper  of  the  East 

CHAPTER  I 

GANDHI   AND  HIS  INDIA 

To  TELL  about  Gandhi  is  to  tell  about  India. 
Gandhi  is  India,  and  India,  restless,  determined 
and  race  conscious,  is  the  real  spirit  of  the  awak- 
ening East. 

This  that  follows  is  the  plain  story  of  Gandhi 
— the  hero  and  saint  of  India's  struggling  three 
hundred  million,  to-day  little  known  to  the  out- 
side world  but  to-morrow  to  be  recognized  as  the 
insurgent  figure  leading  the  great  coming  revolt 
of  the  East  against  the  white  man's  domination. 

To  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the  people  of  Ameri- 
ca and  Europe  the  idea  of  a  violent  repudiation 
of  white  mastery  by  the  black,  brown  and  yellow 
men  of  the  East  is  still  a  wild  phantasy.  But  it 
is  no  longer  a  wild  phantasy  to  me — for  I  have 
seen  Gandhi  and  myself  felt  the  rising  temper 
of  Asia. 

For  hours  I  sat  with  this  strange,  shrunken 
little  man  whom  three  hundred  million  worship, 
and  talked  with  him  as  freely  as  I  would  vnth.  an 
old  friend.     There  was  no  fencing  or  parrying. 

15 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

He  had  nothing  to  conceal.  He  had  hit  upon  a 
way  of  breaking  the  British  power  in  India  and 
cracking  the  greatest  empire  history  has  ever 
seen,  and  all  without  bombs  or  bloodshed.  It  was 
no  secret  and  he  wanted  to  tell  me  about  it. 

This  was  down  in  Cawnpore.  Early  that  morn- 
ing I  had  gone  to  the  station  to  see  him  come  in. 
The  Indian  city  was  still  sleeping  in  the  filth  of 
its  mud  doorways.  The  heat  of  the  night  was 
dead  and  this  was  the  cooling  hour  before  a  blaz- 
ing sun  jumped  like  a  jack-in-the-box  high  into 
the  sky. 

We  jogged  through  a  semi-European  street. 
In  another  part  of  the  city — a  clean  part  with 
wide  streets  and  great  lawns — the  white  sahibs 
from  England  live. 

**You  go  Delhi?"  my  driver  asked. 

"No.  I'm  going  to  see  Gandhi  arrive  at  the 
station." 

He  turned  in  his  seat. 

** Saint  Gandhi!"  he  questioned,  as  one  pro- 
nouncing a  sacred  name.  "He  is  very  wonderful. 
.  .  .  He  is  poor  like  I  am.  His  wife  weaves 
his  clothes  for  him,  .  .  The  English  are  afraid 
of  him.  They  would  like  to  put  him  in  prison  and 
kill  him  but  they  don't  dare.  He  is  very  won- 
derful.   ..." 

He  had  to  pull  his  horse  up  sharp  to  keep  from 
hitting  a  lazy,  old  sacred  cow  ambling  across  the 
road.    Hitting  a  cow  in  India  is  no  laughing  mat- 

16 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

ter.  It  miglit  be  some  one's  grandmother  or 
great-great-grandfather.  It  is  the  superstition 
of  five  thousand  years'  standing. 

We  passed  two  men,  wearing  dirty  patches  of 
cotton  around  their  loins,  straining  at  a  great 
cart.  They  were  thin  men  with  their  ribs  show- 
ing. 

*'Do  they  know  who  Gandhi  is?"  I  asked  my 
driver.  I  was  anxious  to  find  out  what  different 
types  of  Indians  thought  of  this  leader. 

"Shall  I  ask  them,  saMM" 

I  nodded  yes. 

He  stopped  them  and  spoke  to  the  taller  of  the 
two,  in  a  native  dialect.  The  man  was  eager  to 
talk. 

*'He  says  Gandhi  will  give  them  freedom  from 
the  white  men  and  ..." 

The  smaller  fellow  who  had  kept  silent  so  far 
stepped  forward  then  and  broke  into  the  con- 
versation. 

*'They  have  worked  all  their  lives  like  beasts," 
he  says,  *'and  all  they  got  is  half  enough  food  and 
a  pig  pen  to  sleep  in.  Gandhi  will  change  every- 
thing for  them. ' ' 

We  drove  on.  An  old  man  stretched  on  a  rope- 
bed  in  front  of  a  doorway  in  the  street  was  dy- 
ing; my  driver  explained  that  old  ones  were  al- 
ways brought  outdoors  to  die. 

We  turned  into  a  narrow  crooked  street  smell- 
ing of  the  rotted  East.    Early  though  it  was,  it 

17 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

was  noisy  with  unwashed  children,  so  filthy  that 
one  stopped  idly  to  wonder  whether  the  street  got 
its  dirt  from  the  children  or  the  children  from 
the  street.  Most  of  them  were  naked:  there  was 
not  even  a  rag  to  tie  around  them.  They  ran 
after  me  screaming  for  coppers.  I  told  my  driver 
to  whip  up  his  lazy  horse. 

**Do  they  know  about  Gandhi  I"  I  asked  him. 

*'They  get  him  now  from  their  mother's 
breast,'*  he  answered. 

He  was  a  talkative  man,  but  it  took  all  his  at- 
tention now  in  order  not  to  run  over  some  naked 
baby  playing  in  the  dust,  or  brush  into  some 
woman,  toothless  and  barren  at  forty — or  crash 
into  some  bhnd  beggar  picking  his  way  through 
the  eternal  night  mth  his  staff. 

In  another  five  minutes  we  drew  up  at  the  sta- 
tion. Only  a  few  local  leaders  were  supposed  to 
be  there  to  welcome  Gandhi,  for  the  committee 
in  charge  of  the  great  mass  meeting  to  be  held 
in  the  evening  had  given  out  word  that  there  was 
to  be  no  demonstration  when  Gandhi  arrived. 
But  that  did  not  keep  them  away.  They  had  come 
by  the  hundreds  on  foot  and  donkey-back  and  in 
western  motor-cars. 

There  must  have  been  eight  thousand  there — ' 
and  I  was  the  only  white  man  among  them.  It 
gave  me  a  creepy  sensation  of  half  fear.  I  felt 
like  some  thoughtless  tourist  peering  into  a 
strange  temple  during  the  hour  of  worship.    For 

18 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

Gandhi  was  their  priest  and  this  was  as  holy  to 
them  as  a  sacrament.  I  imagine  many  of  them 
thought  I  was  a  government  agent  or  secret  ser- 
vice man  as  I  made  my  way  through  the  great 
crush  that  filled  the  railway  platform  and  over- 
ran into  the  little  square  in  front  of  the  station. 
I  decided  I  would  be  less  conspicuous  and  enjoy 
myself  more  in  some  modest  niche  so  I  elbowed 
to  a  place  by  the  door  of  the  station-master's 
office,  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd. 

The  station  agent,  a  pleasant  Indian  in  Euro- 
pean uniform,  came  from  his  office  and  addressed 
me  in  English.  I  imagine  he  too  thought  I  was 
an  English  official. 

**I'm  an  American  writer,''  I  explained  imme- 
diately. "I've  been  hearing  a  lot  about  your  man 
Gandhi  so  I  've  made  a  special  trip  here  from  Cal- 
cutta to  see  him." 

"You're  an  American?"  he  questioned. 

When  I  finally  convinced  him  that  I  was,  he 
was  only  too  mlling  to  answer  my  questions. 

"Gandhi  is  the  man  who  is  going  to  free  India 
from  the  British,"  he  whispered.  "He  has  three 
hundred  million  Indians  back  of  him.  He's  the 
only  thing  in  the  world  the  British  are  afraid  of. 
They  don 't  dare  touch  him.  If  they  'd  put  him  in 
jail  or  try  to  stop  him  there 'd  be  a  revolution 
here  within  twenty-four  hours.  Just  look  at  this 
crowd — there's  every  type  of  man  in  India  here." 

It    was    a    wonderful   group    of    worshipers. 

19 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Here  and  there  scattered  through  the  crowd  you 
could  see  a  man  in  western  dress,  but  the  great 
majority  wore  very  plain  white  cotton  garments 
with  gay  colored  headgear.  They  were  mostly 
poor  clerks  or  laborers. 

Gandhi  was  a  dream  and  a  hope  for  them. 
They  were  tired  of  it  all — the  ignorance,  and 
poverty,  and  caste,  crowned  now  with  white  su- 
premacy. They  were  blaming  the  white  man  for 
everything.    It  was  unfair  but  very  human. 

For  one  hundred  and  seventy  years  the  British 
had  been  running  things  in  India.  Unquestion- 
ably they  had  accomplished  much  that  was  good 
for  India — ^but  they  had  only  gone  half-way. 
They  had  painted  a  veneer  of  western  civilization 
on  the  soiled  and  outworn  East  when  what  was 
needed  was  a  real  renovation.  The  common  man 
had  not  been  touched.  There  *d  been  no  effort  to 
educate  him — that  was  too  dangerous  because 
with  education  comes  new  demands  and  fresh 
assumptions. 

So  these  laborers  and  petty  clerks  were  ready 
for  their  chance  in  the  world.  They  were  gaining 
it,  too,  through  their  own  fighting.  Everywhere 
over  India  an  epidemic  of  strikes  had  broken  out. 
There  was  hardly  a  city  of  any  importance  that 
did  not  face  serious  labor  troubles.  These  very 
nights  Bombay  was  dark  on  account  of  a  strike 
of  the  men  of  the  gas  works,  while  the  postal  and 
telegraph  men  had  been  striking  for  weeks  and 

20 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

twelve  hundred  street-car  men  were  out.  In 
another  part  of  India  a  great  walk-out  of  thou- 
sands of  railroad  men  had  taken  place  and  word 
had  just  been  received  of  a  dangerous  labor  situa- 
tion on  a  number  of  tea  plantations. 

I  recalled  the  filth  of  Calcutta's  streets.  The 
sweepers  were  fighting  for  four  cents  more  a 
day.  Only  recently  a  hundred  thousand  laborers 
employed  in  the  great  cotton  mills  of  Bombay  had 
struck  for  a  thirty  per  cent,  increase  in  wages  and 
a  ten-hour  day.  They  were  now  earning  about 
thirty  cents  a  day. 

The  birth  of  the  labor  movement  in  India  has 
been  even  more  spectacular  than  the  political 
awakening.  Two  and  a  half  years  ago  there  was 
not  an  effective  labor  organization  in  the  whole 
country.  To-day  there  is  a  great  central  organi- 
zation known  as  the  All  Indian  Trades  Union  Con- 
gress with  several  hundred  thousand  members 
enrolled  in  scores  of  trade  unions.  In  the  city  of 
Madras  alone  there  are  twenty-seven  distinct 
unions  with  a  membership  of  more  than  eighty 
thousand — and  the  work  is  just  started. 

The  organizers  of  the  national  body  plan  to 
enroll  more  than  two  million  workmen  within 
a  year.  While  it  is  all  basically  economic  this 
powerful  young  organization  is  to  be  swung  as  a 
political  club,  in  the  battle  for  home  rule.  It  is, 
with  the  Mohammedan  organizations,  the  most 
powerful    of    the    fighting    bodies    supporting 

21 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Gandhi  and  his  non-cooperation.  Its  leaders 
plan  to  use  all  the  methods  of  direct  action,  go- 
slow  strikes  and  simple  non-cooperation  in  order 
to  gain  their  political  ends. 

It  is  all  tremendously  picturesque.  One  leader 
outlined  to  me  his  plan  for  enrolling  the  cooks  of 
Bombay.  He  explained  there  were  fifteen  thou- 
sand of  them  mostly  employed  in  foreign  homes, 
who  already  had  a  working  organization.  Any 
organized  effort  on  their  part  to  boycott  British 
homes  would  simply  demoralize  the  whole  foreign 
life — for  the  servant  is  all-powerful  and  all-neces- 
sary in  India.  Modest  households,  which  in 
America  would  have  one  maid  at  the  most,  must 
have  from  six  to  ten  servants  in  India. 

Besides  growing  race  conscious,  these  millions 
were  becoming  class  conscious  as  well.  To-day 
they  were  blaming  the  white  man  for  their  condi- 
tion. But  to-morrow  they  will  find  that  their 
newly  born  unions  are  not  being  checked  by  Brit- 
ish power  alone.  Some  day  they  will  discover 
that  Calcutta's  jute  mills  and  Bombay's  cotton 
factories  and  the  steaming  tea  plantations  and 
the  scorching  fields  are  not  all  owned  by  English- 
men. 

They  will  discover  that  the  caste  system  that 
chains  them  to  the  mud-holes  they  were  born  in 
was  thought  out  and  working  long  before — thou- 
sands of  years  before — the  British  Empire  was 
ever  dreamed  of.    Some  day  the  fifty-seven  mil- 

22 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

lion  ''untoucliables" — the  pitiful  human  animals 
of  the  lowest  depths  and  the  bottom  caste,  living 
worse  than  swine — will  lift  up  their  heads  and 
tear  to  pieces  the  system  that  has  cheated  them 
for  so  long.  To-day  in  some  parts  of  India,  if 
they  walk  within  sixty-four  feet  of  a  Brahmin  of 
the  sacred  highest  caste,  or  throw  their  shadow 
on  him,  they  might  be  beaten  to  death.  To-mor- 
row they  will  wield  the  clubs  themselves. 

Our  own  Christian  foreign  missions,  often 
sneered  at  and  made  fun  of  by  the  unknomng, 
are  reaching  dovm  and  touching  these  poor  ''un- 
touchables.'' They  are  bringing  them  out  of  their 
wallow  holes.  Most  of  the  Christian  converts  in 
India  are  from  this  God-forgotten  class.  And 
strange  to  tell,  the  simple  single  baptism  of  these 
abused  people  makes  them  step  forward  real  men, 
who  shake  off  all  the  fear  and  superstition  of 
their  beaten  caste  as  they  shake  the  water  from 
their  dripping  heads. 

And  this  same  thing  is  coming  true  of  the  num- 
berless other  castes  of  the  lower  orders.  They 
blame  the  British  to-day  for  their  poverty  and 
ignorance.  But  when  they  do  break  the  British 
power  they  T\ill  discover  they  have  other  things 
to  break  before  they  can  come  up  into  the  sun- 
light. And  one  by  one  they  will  smash  their 
castes  and  superstitions  and  traditions  and  their 
man-made  religions. 

The  revolt  of  the  East  against  the  West  is  only 

23 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

a  prelude  to  the  greater  revolt  of  the  East  against 
the  East  itself.  But  foreign  masters  come  first, 
and  so  here  these  thousands  were  on  this  seething 
platform  offering  themselves  to  Gandhi — their 
saint  and  hero-leader. 

Standing  near  me  was  a  beggar  in  a  bit  of 
grimy  sack  cloth:  in  the  bazaars  and  the  great 
whispering  galleries  of  the  East  he  had  caught 
the  magic  of  Saint  Gandhi.  He  had  quit  his  stand 
and  hidden  his  beggar's  bowl  for  the  moment,  to 
shout  the  name  of  Gandhi. 

The  train  was  late  but  the  crowd  was  patient; 
for  thousands  of  years  they  had  been  waiting  and 
so  an  hour  or  two  more  didn't  make  any  differ- 
ence. Several  women  were  in  the  crowd  and  I 
noticed  a  number  of  boys;  but  they  lacked  the 
irresponsibility  and  spontaneity  of  our  own  boys ; 
they  were  born  old. 

Then  the  train  came  in,  and  from  a  third-class 
wooden  coach  a  little  figure  in  white — a  pathetic 
little  figure — alighted.  With  a  sense  of  shock  I 
realized  that  this  insignificant  shrunken  figure 
was  the  man  I  had  heard  so  much  about — the 
great  Gandhi.  He  was  thin,  shrunken,  almost 
emaciated,  and  there  was  no  look  of  the  leader 
about  him. 

But  I  knew  it  was  Gandhi  as  quickly  as  the 
crowd  did.  He  was  pathetic  but  there  was  a  touch 
of  tremendous  spiritual  power  about  him. 

Here  was  the  man  who  was  shaking  the  world 

24 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

mth  a  new  idea.  Here  was  the  man  who  was 
fighting  a  new  kind  of  warfare — ^who  was  enlist- 
ing the  souls  and  hearts  of  men  to  break  ma- 
chine-guns. 

This  was  the  man  who  twenty-five  years  ago, 
a  young  English  trained  lawyer  of  good  family 
and  high  caste,  had  given  up  everything  to  fight 
for  his  countrymen. 

Eeturning  to  India  from  his  law  school  in  Eng- 
land he  had  been  sent  by  his  firm  to  South  Africa 
to  conduct  an  important  case.  With  the  case  set- 
tled he  was  preparing  to  go  back  to  India  when 
his  sympathies  were  enlisted  in  a  fight  that  was 
being  made  to  improve  the  condition  of  thousands 
of  contract  Indian  laborers  employed  in  South 
Africa  by  the  Boers  and  English. 

It  was  a  fight  that  extended  through  twenty- 
five  years  and  this  thin,  anemic  weakling  led  it. 
He  spent  not  a  little  of  that  time  in  prison  and  in 
disgrace  but  he  stuck  to  his  guns  and  in  the  end 
saw  the  worst  of  the  injustices  swept  away  and 
his  countrymen  in  much  better  condition. 

Time  and  again  he  had  been  roughly  handled, 
but  he  had  never  lost  faith  in  the  right  and  justice 
of  the  British  Empire.  When  the  Boer  War  came 
along  he  promptly  organized  an  ambulance  corps 
for  the  English  Army  and  actively  engaged  in 
helping  the  British  cause. 

When  this  last  great  war  broke  out,  Gandhi 
had  only  just  arrived  in  England  from  South 

25 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Africa,  but  he  promptly  organized  another  ambu- 
lance corps.  In  1915  he  went  to  India  and  for 
three  years  was  active  in  his  support  of  the  Brit- 
ish cause. 

At  the  same  time  he  was  quite  willing  to  throw 
himself  into  dangerous  labor  situations  when  he 
made  certain  that  his  people  were  being  mis- 
treated by  the  government  or  their  employers  or 
their  landlords.  He  made  no  discrimination  here 
between  the  English  and  his  own  people.  Slowly 
he  gained  the  great  confidence  of  all  India.  His 
life  of  sacrifice  and  unselfish  devotion  had  won 
him  the  title  of  ** Saint"  Gandhi.  Like  most  of 
India's  beloved  heroes  of  the  past,  he  was  a  hero 
of  the  soul  and  not  of  the  sword. 

Through  it  all  he  kept  his  faith  in  the  British 
Empire.  Others  faltered  and  lost  faith,  but  he 
kept  his  bright.  He  insisted  that  India  must  help 
England  in  her  hour  of  need  and  then  when  the 
war  was  won  England  would  do  the  square  thing. 
He  would  not  countenance  anything  that  even 
hinted  at  revolt. 

Then  one  steaming  April  day  at  Amritsar  in 
the  north  of  India,  when  a  British  general  pumped 
steel  into  a  vast  crowd  of  unarmed  Indians,  killing 
four  hundred  and  injuring  another  one  thousand 
— and  England  didn't  seem  to  care — he  lost  this 
faith.  Not  many  people  in  the  western  world  re- 
member anything  about  the  incident,  but  there 
are  few  dates  in  India's  thousands  of  years  of 

26 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

history  that  are  more  important — and  few  days 
in  the  annals  of  the  British  Empire  that  are 
blacker  or  promise  to  be  more  costly. 

It  turned  Gandhi  from  a  strong  believer  in  the 
Empire  to  a  great  hater.  And  when  Gandhi 
turned  India  turned.  All  India  turned — Moslems, 
Hindus,  Sikhs — all  India. 

For  centuries  India  has  quarreled  and  fought 
mthin  herself.  Different  sects,  castes  and  reli- 
gions have  kept  the  great  country  in  a  turmoil. 
England  had  only  to  fan  the  fire  of  these  differ- 
ences to  make  her  rule  a  comparatively  easy  one. 
It  has  been  her  famous  *  *  divide  and  rule ' '  policy. 

The  Indian  army  is  a  good  illustration  of  this 
policy.  Each  brigade  will  be  composed  of  entirely 
different  and  distinct  units — one  Mohammedan 
battalion,  one  Hindu  battalion,  one  Sikh  battalion 
with  one  British  white  battalion  to  control  the 
whole  thing.  Each  has  different  customs,  dia- 
lects, religions  and  superstitions.  There  has  been 
no  chance  of  developing  any  unity  of  opposition 
among  all  these  widely  separated  groups. 

Now  it  is  different.  The  Mohammedans  and 
the  Hindus  have  buried  their  ancient  grudges  and 
the  leaders  of  the  seventy  million  Moslems  and 
the  two  hundred  million  Hindus  are  at  last  work- 
ing hand  in  glove.  In  1906  a  Moslem  League  was 
formed  and  in  1915  held  its  first  joint  session 
^dth  the  great  All  Indian  National  Congress — an 
unofficial  body  representing  the  hopes  and  de- 

27 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

mands  of  all  India.  Tighter  and  tighter  the  bonds 
binding  the  two  great  bodies  have  been  drawn 
so  that  to-day  they  are  fighting  side  by  side. 

These  seventy  million  Mohammedans,  incident- 
ally, are  the  real  fighting  force  of  the  home  rule 
agitation.  As  a  leaven  and  ferment  their  unrest 
has  been  put  upon  a  religious  basis,  with  a  foun- 
dation that  goes  down  to  the  very  depths  of  the 
Moslem  faith. 

These  Moslems,  besides  fighting  for  home  rule, 
demand  that  England  rewrite  the  Turkish  peace 
treaty  and  give  back  to  the  sultan  of  Turkey  the 
control  over  all  the  sacred  Mohammedan  shrinea- 
To  the  simple  believer  it  is  a  pure  matter  of  reli- 
gion, but  to  the  shrewd  Moslem  leaders,  this 
religious  element  is  the  steel  in  their  swords  of 
revolt. 

The  terrible  killing  that  April  day  in  Amritsar 
helped  forge  these  same  swords.  And  quite  as 
important,  it  broke  the  faith  of  Gandhi  in  the  just- 
ness and  fairness  of  England.  And  when 
Gandhi's  faith  went,  India  too  lost  her  faith. 

With  faith  in  England  gone  Gandhi  showed 
them  how  to  draw  a  great  new  faith  in  their  own 
India.  They  could  break  this  power  that  was 
overshadowing  them  by  the  invincible  force  of 
their  spirits.  They  would  withdraw  from  every- 
thing that  was  British.  They  would  cease  all 
cooperation;  they  would  boycott  British  goods; 
they  would  pull  the  fires  from  the  British  engine 
in  India.     They  would  leave  England  in  India 

28 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

prostrate  and  helpless.  They  would  beat  the 
British  Empire  by  simply  not  playing  ball.  They 
would  break  the  British  Empire  by  taking  away 
India. 

This  thin,  half  broken  figure  worming  his  way 
gently  through  the  crowd  was  the  torch-bearer  of 
all  this. 

It  was  raw  drama.  It  was  all  new  for  the  West 
■ — this  power  of  spiritual  force.  This  man  was 
pleading  and  begging  for  peace,  for  non-violence, 
and  yet  he  was  enlisting  the  millions  of  sleeping 
India  for  war.  It  was  a  paradox  that  only  the 
East  could  understand.  It  was  his  weak  thin 
voice  that  was  calling  millions  of  native  Indians 
out  of  the  past. 

He  had  finally  awakened  them  and  here  they 
were,  thousands  of  them,  cheering  from  the  very 
depths  of  their  hearts. 

Men  fought  to  kiss  his  hands  and  to  touch  his 
skirt  with  their  lips.  One  patriarch  with  a  great 
white  beard  clutched  his  hands  and  buried  his 
face  in  them  and  sobbed  in  them.  He  was  a  Mes- 
siah to  them  all. 

Two  hours  later  Gandhi  was  sitting  at  my  feet 
talking  to  me  in  soft  low  voice.  It  was  in  a  great 
bare  room  without  furniture.  There  was  no  one 
there  when  I  entered,  but  presently  a  door  opened 
and  Gandhi  stepped  forward  with  hand  out- 
stretched. 

He  had  eyes  that  were  deep  with  pity  and  love, 

29 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

and  burning  bright  with  a  great  purpose.  You 
forgot  that  he  was  a  frail  little  man  mth  a  funny 
shaved  head  and  hollow  sallow  cheeks,  with  most 
of  his  teeth  gone,  and  that  he  wore  coarse  home- 
spun clothes,  and  that  his  feet  were  bare.  It  was 
his  eyes  that  held  you. 

Some  one  brought  a  single  chair  and  he  insisted 
that  I  sit  on  it  while  he  squatted  cross-legged  on 
the  floor  beside  me.  Possibly  twenty  of  his  local 
disciples  came  in  noiselessly  and  seated  them- 
selves on  the  floor  in  a  semicircle  about  us.  Cer- 
tainly not  half  of  them  could  understand  English, 
but  they  could  look  at  Gandhi. 

"What  can  I  tell  youf*  he  asked  in  soft,  per- 
fectly spoken  English. 

*  *  The  story  of  how  you  are  going  to  break  Brit- 
ish power  in  India,"  I  replied. 

A  ghost  of  a  smile  that  seemed  to  hurt  him 
trailed  across  his  face  like  a  moving  shadow. 
**  During  the  Boer  War  I  had  great  faith  and  con- 
fidence in  the  British  and  raised  a  stretcher- 
bearer  corps  to  help  them,"  he  began.  **In  1914 
I  reached  London  two  days  after'  war  was  de- 
clared and  immediately  organized  an  ambulance 
corps.  Later  I  came  on  here  and  when  I  found 
the  Mohammedan  leaders  worried  about  the  fu- 
ture of  the  sultan,  who  is  the  head  of  the  Church 
and  the  guardian  of  their  shrines,  I  told  them  that 
Lloyd  George  would  keep  his  promise,  that  he 
would  treat  Turkey  fairly.    But  they  said  no. 

30 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

"I  was  insistent  that  we  must  do  all  we  could 
to  help  England  in  this  great  hour  of  her  need. 
I  pleaded  for  army  enlistment — we  raised  more 
than  a  million  men  in  India  for  the  British  Army, 

**Then  the  war  ended  and  I  said  that  now  we 
would  gain  our  reward,  we  would  be  given  at  least 
practical  home  rule  and  be  permitted  to  work  out 
our  own  destiny.    I  still  had  faith ! ' ' 

Always  it  was  this  great  faith  that  he  came  back 
to,  time  and  again.  Faith,  he  believed,  would 
move  empires. 

*'But  there  was  nothing  but  promises  and  a 
half-hearted  reform  bill.  They  call  this  bill  the 
Montague-Chelmsford  Bill  and  they  hold  that  it 
fulfills  their  pledges.  But  it  gives  us  only  the 
cheapest  imitation  of  self-government,  of  home 
rule.  It  allows  certain  Indian  assemblies  and 
local  administrations,  but  it  is  all  circumscribed 
by  a  system  of  checks  and  balances  that  leaves  all 
the  real  power  in  the  hands  of  the  British.  It  is 
a  great  subterfuge — and  we  are  sick  and  tired  of 
subterfuges. 

*' While  this  bill  was  being  discussed  and  pre- 
pared the  Punjab  disturbances  broke  out.  Those 
were  terrible  days,  but  I  was  sure  that  the  British 
would  be  just  and  fair  so  I  still  held  faith.'* 

At  great  length  Gandhi  explained  all  about 
these  terrible  days.  Over  all  the  cities  of  North- 
ern India  there  was  in  that  spring  of  1919  a  grow- 
ing feeling  of  unrest  and  dissatisfaction.    About 

31 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

half  the  population  are  Moslems,  and  already 
there  was  at  work  the  religious  ferment  that  was 
expressing  itself  in  the  Khalifat  questions.  But 
more  important  than  this  religious  aspect  was  a 
pure  demand  for  nationalism.  This  demand  and 
the  unrest  that  went  with  it  were  intensified  by 
the  Rowlatt  Bill  which  gave  special  and  drastic 
power  for  the  handling  of  all  kinds  and  phases 
of  rebellious  actions. 

This  Rowlatt  Bill  was  a  pure  war-time  measure 
kept  in  force  after  the  war.  It  gave  the  govern- 
ment tremendous  powers  over  the  press  and  gave 
to  police  and  judiciary  practically  autocratic 
authority  over  everything  that  seemed  so  much  as 
flavored  with  any  demand  for  home  rule  and  free- 
dom. 

As  a  protest  against  this  law,  hartals — com- 
plete closing  of  all  stores  and  shops — ^began  to  be 
called  by  the  natives  toward  the  last  of  Febru- 
ary, 1919.  Meetings  were  held  everywhere  and  a 
tenseness  against  the  British  began  to  be  felt. 
Gandhi,  who  attempted  to  visit  the  Punjab,  was 
turned  back  to  the  border,  intensifying  the  feel- 
ing. Inflammatory  speeches  and  seditious  notices 
were  of  almost  daily  occurrence. 

On  the  morning  of  April  10, 1919,  Doctor  Satya- 
pal  and  Doctor  Kitchlew,  the  two  most  powerful 
local  leaders  in  the  north,  were  deported  by  motor 
from  Amritsar.  As  soon  as  this  news  spread  a 
crowd  collected  in  Amritsar  and  attempted  to 

32 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

march  to  the  deputy  commissioner's  to  protest. 
At  Hall  Gate  Bridge  it  encountered  a  patrol  of 
soldiers;  stones  were  thrown  and  the  troops  re- 
plied with  fire,  killing  several.  At  this  the  crowd 
became  a  wild  mob,  completely  out  of  the  hands 
of  its  leaders.  It  burned  all  European  and  gov- 
ernment property  in  the  city  and  killed  three  Eng- 
lish bank  managers,  and  Miss  Sherwood,  a  mis- 
sion worker,  was  assaulted,  the  railway  station 
was  attacked  and  an  English  guard  killed. 

*'0n  the  morning  of  April  13th,  General  Dyer 
heard  that  a  great  meeting  was  to  be  held  in  a 
hollow  square  called  Jallenwala  Bagh,"  Gandhi 
went  on.  ''A  few  minutes  before  five  in  the  eve- 
ning he  marched  a  detachment  of  fifty  Gurkhas 
and  Sikhs  into  one  end  of  the  square  and  imme- 
diately opened  fire  on  the  unarmed  crowd,  some 
ten  thousand  people,  assembled  there." 

Gandhi's  voice  trailed  into  a  whisper  of  horror. 
I  was  living  again  the  brutal  memories  of  my  own 
visit  to  this  slaughter  pen. 

Gandhi  called  it  ''Jallenwala  Bagh" — its  In- 
dian name.  In  my  mind  I  had  always  called  it 
Death's  Hollow.  I  had  been  there  only  a  few 
days  before,  and  again  I  was  walking  along  the 
lane  leading  into  it — a  lane  so  narrow  that  Dyer's 
two  armored  cars  could  not  pass  through. 

Over  the  whole  terrible  hollow  hung  a  death 
shadow  as  sickly  and  crushing  as  the  pitiless  heat 
that  smothered  everything  like  a  great  blanket. 

33 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

There  should  have  been  buzzing  blue  flies  and  a 
vulture  or  two  about,  but  there  was  none — the 
heat  was  too  terrific  even  for  flies  and  carrion. 

''Through  that  lane  Dyer  and  his  fifty  Gurkhas 
and  Sikhs  came  in,"  Gandhi  droned.  "They  left 
their  armored  cars  outside  because  they  could  not 
bring  them  in;  they  would  have  killed  every  one 
had  they  had  those  machine-guns. 

''On  a  little  rise  of  ground  next  the  wall  Dyer 
drew  up  his  soldiers.  He  marched  them  in, 
placed  them  on  both  sides  the  entrance  and  imme- 
diately they  opened  fire.  The  people  had  no 
warning,  no  chance. 

"The  speaker's  stand  was  in  the  center.  There 
were  four  or  five  small  passages,  altogether,  and 
after  the  soldiers  started  firing  and  the  crowd 
tried  to  escape  he  concentrated  his  firing  on  these 
exits.  There  were  heaps  of  dead  and  injured 
around  each  of  them.  He  fired  until  he'd  used  up 
all  his  ammunition — one  thousand  six  hundred 
and  fifty  rounds — ^he  admitted  that  in  his  evi- 
dence. If  he'd  had  his  armored  cars  inside  he 
would  have  killed  them  all." 

Like  one  wandering  in  a  trance  I  stumbled 
again  over  the  parched  brown  ground  of  the 
square,  raising  my  feet  so  that  I  would  not  tram- 
ple the  prostrate  ghosts  of  dead  men.  Here  were 
bullet  marks  in  the  wall;  some  untrained  boy 
sepoy  still  with  a  heart,  was  shooting  high.  Over 
there  was  the  low  mud  wall  that  had  proved 

34 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

death's  hurdle  to  scores;  a  fresh  coat  of  dried 
mud  hid  its  scars.  On  this  side  was  an  unpro- 
tected open  well,  some  twenty  feet  wide,  that  had 
been  the  tomb  of  a  half  dozen  men. 

Again  I  sat  in  the  shade  of  the  single  big  tree — 
men  and  boys  had  fought  that  day  for  a  place 
behind  its  sturdy  trunk.  Four  hundred  men  had 
been  killed  and  at  least  a  thousand  injured  in  this 
hollow  during  those  six  minutes  of  firing. 

I  brought  myself  up  with  a  jerk.  I  was  back  in 
Cawnpore  in  this  great  bare  room.  Gandhi  was 
squatting  on  the  floor  beside  me,  playing  with  his 
bare  toes,  and  in  the  half-circle  were  his  followers. 
He  was  still  talking  in  his  soft,  gentle  voice. 

"But  infinitely  worse  was  the  horrible,  devilish 
crime  of  deliberately  breaking  the  spirit  of  the 
people — people  who  had  given  tremendous  help 
to  the  empire  during  the  war. 

**  Still  I  held  to  my  faith  and  in  December,  1919, 
I  pleaded  with  our  unofficial  Indian  National 
Congress  for  cooperation,  assuring  them  that 
when  the  British  people  knew  the  facts  they 
would  sweep  away  Lieutenant-Governor  O'Dwy- 
er,  General  Dyer  and  the  whole  breed,  and  right 
the  Khalifat  wrongs.  But  I  saw  Lloyd  George 
turn  against  us  and  British  public  opinion  praise 
to  the  skies  Lieutenant-Governor  O'Dwyer,  who 
was  a  hundred  times  worse  than  General  Dyer. 
I  think  General  Dyer  would  have  acted  like  a  fine 
soldier  had  not  the  spirit  of  O'Dwyer  poisoned 

35 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

him.    But  General  Dyer  went  mad,  shooting  inno- 
cent men  mitil  his  ammunition  was  exhausted.'* 

Gandhi's  face  was  flushed  as  he  continued:  **I 
can't  accuse  the  Germans  of  anything  half  as 
terrible  as  what  Dyer  did.  When  I  saw  the  House 
of  Lords  and  many  members  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons further  insult  India  by  defending  Dyer,  I 
thought  my  connection  with  British  power  must 
end  until  they  repented  for  their  crimes  and 
asked  forgiveness.  They've  done  neither,  so  I 
am  trying  my  best  to  end  British  connection 
with  India. 

"At  first  I  thought  the  new  legislative  reforms 
might  work,  but  to-day  with  the  scales  dropped 
from  my  eyes  I  look  upon  them  as  a  death-trap. 
So  now  I  am  advocating  non-violent  non-coopera- 
tion. India  has  a  population  of  three  hundred 
and  fifteen  million,  while  the  number  of  English 
officials  here  are  not  more  than  one  hundred  thou- 
sand. If  we  break  all  connection  with  this  one 
hundred  thousand,  in  spite  of  machine-guns,  aero- 
planes and  strong  forts,  they  are  physically  pow- 
erless; therefore  if  we  non-cooperate  they  must 
automatically  leave  India  or  satisfy  us.  And 
they  can  satisfy  us  now  only  by  rewriting  the 
Turkish  peace  terms,  granting  full  reparation  for 
Punjab  crimes  and  by  giving  full  self-govern- 
ment, such  that  India  may  voluntarily  remain  a 
party  in  the  empire — if  she  chooses.  It  is  to  be 
non- violent  non-cooperation. ' ' 

36 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

This  Tolstoian  philosophy  of  non-resistance  is 
as  old  to  the  East  as  the  hills  of  the  Himalayas, 
but  it  will  always  be  mysterious  and  untranslat- 
able to  the  pure  western  mind.  It  is  a  faith  in 
the  unbreakable  force  of  spirit.  It  is  the  convert- 
ing of  a  negative  force  into  a  positive  one;  the 
vitalizing  of  the  inertia  of  the  East.  It  is  all  of 
the  mysticism  of  the  Orient. 

Yet  it  is  quite  simple  and  quite  plausible.  It 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  strike  of  all 
India.  The  problem  Gandhi  faces  is  to  establish 
a  propaganda  organization  sufficient  to  make 
India  conscious  of  her  power  and  willing  to  suffer 
in  order  to  gain  her  ends. 

The  general  scheme  of  non-cooperation  adopted 
by  the  Indian  National  Congress,  the  great  voice 
of  India,  embodies  a  number  of  points : 

1.  Giving  up  of  all  British  titles  and  honorary 
offices. 

2.  Boycott  of  all  official  functions. 

3.  Withdrawal  of  students  from  all  govern- 
ment owned  or  aided  schools  and  the  establish- 
ment of  Indian  national  schools. 

4.  Boycott  British  courts  by  Indian  lawyers 
and  litigants  and  the  establishment  of  private 
arbitration  courts. 

5.  Refusal  of  Indians  to  be  candidates  for  new 
assemblies  and  the  total  abstinence  from  all  vot- 
ing, and 

6.  Boycott  English-made  goodSi 

37 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Already  the  program  is  being  extended  to  in- 
clude non-payment  of  taxes.  Withdrawal  of  all 
government  servants  will  probably  be  attempted 
later,  Avith  desertion  from  the  army  as  a  final 
stage.  It  is  all  Gandhi's  idea  and  it  is  Gandhi's 
power  that  keeps  the  whole  movement  from  turn- 
ing to  terrible  violence. 

*'If  there  is  violence  it  will  be  because  the  gov- 
ernment takes  oppressive  measures  against  us,'^ 
Gandhi  continued.  "There  is  always  danger  in  a 
movement  of  this  kind,  but  if  we  had  not  taken 
this  course  there  would  have  been  trouble  any- 
how. We  shall  go  ahead  with  w^hat  we  have 
mapped  out,  but  if  our  present  non-cooperation 
fails,  we  shall  next  call  out  all  government  ser- 
vants; and  the  next  phase  will  be  to  call  out  the 
soldiers.  The  amount  of  violence  will  depend  on 
what  the  government  does  rather  than  w^hat  we 
do. 

''One  thing  is  certain — India  is  not  going  to 
stop.  We  are  trying  to  win  now  by  non-violence ; 
if  this  fails  the  consequence  will  be  too  terrible  to 
contemplate.  Our  people  then  will  have  lost  all 
faith  in  peaceful  means. 

' '  The  movement  might  get  out  of  my  hands  and 
beyond  my  power  but  even  with  that  in  view  and 
even  facing  anarchy,  it  will  be  better  than  the 
present  emasculated,  half-beaten  condition  of 
India.  The  English  have  deprived  us  of  all  man- 
liness,   all   self-respect,    all    self-reliance.      They 

38 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

have  impoverished  us  in  body,  mind  and  soul. 
They  have  broken  our  hearts." 

Outside  there  was  shouting.  Gandhi's  follow- 
ers were  tired  of  waiting;  they  wanted  a  fresh 
glimpse  of  their  hero. 

I  rose  and  bowed  myself  out  of  the  room.  As 
I  made  my  way  to  my  carriage  the  crowd  won- 
dered what  a  white  man  had  been  doing  in  this 
house  of  their  saint.  Some  of  them  muttered 
sullenly  as  I  went  by. 

It  was  India  muttering.  It  was  the  whole 
East  muttering. 

And  some  day  it  will  turn  into  a  wild  shouting 
— a  cry  that  will  carry  with  it  hope  and  fear  and 
anger  and  sorrow.  The  splendid,  lovable  young 
Prince  of  Wales  heard  it  on  his  visit  to  this  pass- 
ing half  empire  of  his.  In  two  or  three  places  it 
became  an  audible,  sullen  warning  cry:  in  others 
it  was  but  the  low  moaning  of  heart-broken 
people. 

Surely  the  prince  learned  a  great  deal  on  this 
inspection  tour — just  as  Gandhi  learned  a  great 
deal.  They  both  must  have  felt  keenly  and  fear- 
somely  the  rising  temper  of  great  India. 

Gandhi,  I  know,  saw  that  his  immediate  task 
was  to  keep  his  non-violent  movement  just  that — 
to  keep  angry  men  sane.  He  had  seen  a  strong 
wind  of  hate  and  determination  throw  the  sparks 
of  his  gentle  flame  of  non-cooperation  high  in  the 
air.    He  had  seen  that  common  India  is  hardly 

39 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

prepared    for  mass    discipline    and   non-violent 
mass  revolt. 

This  knowledge  will  probably  slow  up  his  re- 
volt. In  these  early  days  of  1922  as  I  write  he  is 
centering  his  work  on  the  idea  of  a  nation-wide, 
effective,  pacific  boycott  of  foreign,  and  particu- 
larly British-made,  goods.  To  the  millions  this 
means  cotton  goods. 

In  his  fight  to  awaken  British  consciousness 
through  the  pocketbooks  of  Manchester  cotton 
manufacturers,  he  has  led  the  movement  for  a 
return  to  the  old  hand  looms.  To-day  in  India 
the  real  badge  of  patriotism  and  nationalism  is 
the  wearing  of  the  course,  home-made  cotton  gar- 
ments. Clothes  of  foreign  cut  or  foreign  goods 
are  a  mark  of  disloyalty. 

And  so  India  stumbles  on.  Her  best  friends 
know  that  the  days  ahead  will  not  be  gentle  ones 
for  her.  They  know  that  should  she  succeed  in 
breaking  the  British  hold  on  India  that  dark  days 
would  follow. 

But  they  also  know  that  England  can  not  give 
much  to  India — that  India  must  dream  and  hope 
and  fight  to  gain  things  that  will  be  of  real  bene- 
fit to  her.  They  know  that  the  very  wishing  and 
struggling — the  very  doing  and  daring — the  very 
act  of  arousing  a  consciousness  for  independence 
and  a  willingness  to  fight  and  die  to  gain  it,  goes 
a  long  way  in  making  common  India  ready  and 
worthy  of  that  independence. 

40 


GANDHI  AND  HIS  INDIA 

India  did  need  England — but  now  for  lier  own 
national  soul  she  needs  the  battle  that  it  will  take 
to  send  England  from  her  shores.  She  will  gain 
from  the  very  fight  more  than  England  could 
ever  give. 

In  the  end  a  new  India  will  be  born — an  India 
that  is  of  the  East  yet  has  the  iron  of  the  West 
in  her  civilization.  As  she  takes  from  the  West 
our  genius  for  organization,  our  inventions,  our 
science  and  some  of  our  ethics,  she  will  give  back 
much  of  her  priceless  philosophies,  her  medita- 
tion, her  arts. 

It  will  be  a  fair  exchange.  A  better,  finer  East 
will  result — and  a  wiser,  more  tolerant  West. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM  OF  THE  EAST 

The  STORY  of  the  revolt  against  white  domina- 
tion by  India's  three  hundred  million  is  the  story 
of  the  unrest  of  but  one-third  of  the  billion  black, 
brown  and  yellow  men  of  the  awakening  East. 
This  that  follows  is  the  story  of  another  discon- 
tented third — of  the  great  Mohammedan  millions 
scattered  from  the  provinces  of  India,  through 
the  historical  passes  of  the  Himalayas,  across 
Persia,  Mesopotamia,  Arabia,  over  the  Nile  and 
into  Egypt,  and  across  the  great  stretches  of 
Northern  Africa. 

They  too  are  tired  of  domination.  They  too 
are  tired  of  their  subservience  to  Europe.  They, 
like  the  millions  of  ignorant,  half-hungry  Hindus 
of  India,  want  to  run  their  own  affairs  their  own 
way,  and  they  do  not  care  if  it  is  less  efficient  or 
less  modern  or  less  ''civilized"  than  the  way  of 
their  European  masters  and  tutors.  They  are 
willing  to  admit  the  superiority  of  much  of  west- 
ern civilization,  but  they  want  to  be  the  choosers 
themselves. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  outsider  to  realize  the 
depth  and  the  vital  consequences  of  this  growing 

42 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

racial  and  national  consciousness  of  the  sub- 
merged peoples  of  the  East.  It  is  easy  to  wax 
sentimental  over  the  denied  rights  of  small  na- 
tions and  grow  maudlin  over  such  honeyed 
phrases  as  self-determination,  but  demand  for 
self-government  of  the  East  is  far  from  a  senti- 
mental thing — ^it  is  deep  and  lasting  and  its  roots 
are  planted  in  hate. 

I  remember  it  was  in  a  tiny  nameless  village 
not  so  very  far  from  Cairo  that  I  first  touched 
hands  with  this  growing  hate  of  the  common 
Egyptian  for  the  British.  British  officials  had 
told  me  that  all  this  talk  of  revolt  and  nationalism 
was  the  work  of  a  few  rattle-brained,  loose- 
tongued  Egyptian  lawyers  and  boy-students,  and 
that  it  had  no  real  roots.  So  I  took  a  camel  trip 
into  the  mud  villages  along  the  Nile  to  discover 
first-hand  whether  it  was  only  an  exotic  plant 
thriving  on  hot  air  or  if  it  did  really  go  deep  into 
the  ground. 

Our  lazy  old  camels  shambled  their  way  noise- 
lessly through  the  narrow  crooked  lanes  of  the 
village.  Everything  was  baked  mud  and  straw 
and  brown  dirt.  A  half-dozen  times  we  turned 
comers  and  all  but  bumped  into  veilless  women 
carrying  water- jugs  on  their  heads.  Each  time 
they  fled  in  panic.  Within  their  own  little  com- 
munities they  lived  freely  and  sanely,  but  the  in- 
stant they  encountered  a  stranger  and  particu- 
larly a  white  man  they  ducked  their  heads  behind 
raised  elbows  like  bashful  children. 

43 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

We  drew  up  in  front  of  the  largest  house  in  the 
village  and  our  camels  folded  themselves  up  joint 
by  joint  and  we  slid  off.  A  queer-looking  individ- 
ual, with  cross  eyes  and  a  torn  old  khaki  overcoat 
that  had  seen  war  service,  welcomed  us  to  his  city. 
Apparently  he  was  the  village  constable.  He  led 
us  to  the  corridor  of  the  house  and  excusing  him- 
self for  a  moment,  shuffled  inside  and  in  a  half 
minute  brought  out  a  kindly-looking  patriarch 
with  a  great  white  beard  and  very  gentle,  friendly 
eyes. 

The  old  fellow  apologized  profusely  for  not 
knowing  in  advance  of  our  intention  to  visit  him, 
and  hospitably  showed  us  the  way  into  a  large 
square  living-room  with  a  divan  at  one  end.  Then 
he  gave  an  order  to  the  constable  and  the  cross- 
eyed man  retired.  Apparently  he  sent  him  after 
the  rest  of  the  village  elders,  for  in  a  few  minutes 
they  began  to  file  into  the  room  with  their  best 
robes  on.  There  must  have  been  ten  or  a  dozen 
of  them  all  told. 

These  were  wonderful  old  men.  The  village 
probably  had  a  hmidred  mud  houses  and  these 
dozen  men  were  the  msest  and  most  trusted  men 
of  the  community.  Only  one  or  two  of  them  could 
read  or  write,  but  they  were  as  shrewd  as  Yan- 
kee farmers.  In  their  flowing  colored  robes  and 
brilliant  headgear  they  looked  as  if  they  might 
have  stepped  from  some  child's  picture-book  of 
biblical  tales. 

44 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

They  welcomed  me  with  greatest  courtesy,  but 
they  were  suspicious.  I  said  something  about 
Egyptian  politics,  but  they  were  evasive.  ''We 
have  no  interest  in  politics  here  in  the  country," 
one  old  man  on  my  left  answered.  *'We  care  only 
about  how  much  it  costs  to  live  and  how  low  the 
price  of  our  cotton  is." 

For  fifteen  minutes  they  talked  of  cotton  and 
explained  how  the  whole  life  of  Egj^pt  was  bound 
up  in  it.  When  the  price  was  high  Egj^t  smiled 
and  was  happy  but  when  a  slump  came  there  was 
no  joy  along  the  Nile. 

'*We  are  actually  growing  cotton  at  a  loss  at 
the  present  price,"  one  explained  for  the  tenth 
time.  ''Something  must  be  done  or  we  fellaheen 
will  ..." 

"Just  why  is  it  that  you  want  the  British  to 
gof"  I  cut  in  suddenly,  turning  to  a  squat  old 
fellow  sitting  near  me  who  had  remained  silent 
all  during  the  cotton  talk. 

"We  want  Egypt  for  ourselves,"  he  replied, 
thrown  for  the  moment  off  his  guard.    "I  slave 
and  save  and  send  my  boy  to  school  and  then  to 
college.    When  he  finishes  he  finds  all  the  good 
government  jobs  open  only  to  the  English.    He 
must  take  a  small  place  or  come  back  to  this  little 
village  and  help  me  in  the  fields  and  irrigation 
ditches.    We  want  our  own  people  to  run  our  o^m 
country.    We  are  tired  of  outsiders;  we  are  sick 
of  doing  only  what  they  want  us  to  do.  .  ..  ..   " 

45 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

''And  you,"  I  shot  at  another,  ''what  have  you 
against  the  British ?" 

"During  the  war  they  took  our  camels  and  our 
donkeys  and  our  grain  and  drafted  our  sons  in 
their  labor  armies  and  oppressed  us  just  as  they 
wished,"  he  answered  rapidly.  I  had  broken  the 
crust  at  last  and  they  all  wanted  to  talk.  "The 
British  showed  us  just  what  they  were  in  the  war. 
We  trusted  them  before  that  but  never  again  will 
we  .    .    . " 

A  tall,  raw-boned,  bearded  man  in  a  rich  blue 
robe — a  commanding  figure  in  any  gathering — 
rose  from  his  chair  at  this  point  and  strode  up  in 
front  of  me.  He  was  excited  and  aroused,  and  if 
ever  a  man  told  what  was  beating  in  his  heart 
it  was  he. 

"Yes,  but  that  isn't  all,"  he  exclaimed.  "Look 
at  the  cursed  Capitulations — chains  tied  to  the 
hands  and  feet  of  poor  Egypt.  You  all  profit 
from  them.  What  chance  have  we  for  justice  in 
a  case  against  a  foreigner?" 

I  was  silent  although  I  could  have  answered 
with  the  stock  foreign  apologies  for  these  Capitu- 
lations. They  were  an  inheritance  from  the  days 
of  Turkish  rule  and  had  been  brought  from  Con- 
stantinople by  the  Sick  Man  of  Europe.  They 
were  similar  to  the  "extra  territorial  rights" 
practised  in  China.  Here  in  Egypt  they  exempted 
foreigners  from  practically  all  taxation  and  all 
control  by  Egyptian  authority.    If  a  foreigner 

46 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

committed  a  crime  lie  could  be  tried  only  by  his 
owTi  consular  court.  If  there  was  a  civil  dispute 
between  foreigners  or  a  foreigner  and  a  native 
it  was  tried  in  the  ''mixed  courts"  with  foreign 
and  native  judges.  These  Capitulations  were  un- 
questionably unjust  in  many  ways. 

''Even  these  terrible  Capitulations  are  only 
part  of  it,"  he  went  on.  "So  much  do  the  Eng- 
lish want  our  cotton  that  they  won't  let  us  plant 
tobacco,  and  they  discourage  the  growth  of  our 
own  industries  and  retard  our  commercial  devel- 
opment. We  are  tired  of  the  English  and  we 
want  them  all  to  leave.  If  they  remain  they  must 
act  as  our  guests  and  not  as  our  masters.  We 
want  istiklad — independence. ' ' 

"But  independence  comes  high,"  I  suggested. 
"Are  3'ou  sure  you  are  ready  to  pay  the  full 
cost?" 

"With  our  own  lives  and  with  the  lives  of  our 
sons.  ..." 

"And  with  the  lives  of  our  wives  and  of  our 
children,"  a  man  across  the  room  interjected. 

It  was  dramatic  but  these  men  were  speaking 
from  their  hearts.  In  frozen  Siberia  I  had  heard 
peasants,  dreaming  of  driving  the  Japanese  from 
their  lands,  speak  with  the  same  fervor  and  spirit. 
This  Eyptian  word  istiklad  was  as  magic  a 
word  as  the  Russian  svohoda  or  the  Korean 
mansai — independence!  liberty!  freedom! 

Here  in  this  Nile  village  I  was  seeing  the  birth 

47 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

of  the  spirit  of  nationalism,  of  something  new  for 
this  part  of  the  world.  For  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  all  Egypt  the  fellah  was  thinking  of 
other  things  besides  family  or  village  loyalty — or 
a  stomach  full  of  rice.  He  had  a  national  idea 
and  ideal  for  the  first  time.  He  wanted  common 
education  and  common  chance.  He  wanted  real 
equality.  He  wanted  class  equality  and  color 
equality  and  political  equality.  He  was  awaken- 
ing. 

*'Eut  you  men  forget  what  the  conditions  were 
in  the  old  days  before  the  British  came,"  I 
argued.  "I  venture  that  some  of  you  in  this  room 
still  bear  the  scars  of  the  tax  collector's  whip  or 
the  overseer's  lash." 

"Yes,"  one  old  fellow  answered,  "but  no  one 
is  ever  going  to  oppress  us  in  the  future.  We  are 
sick  and  tired  of  being  under-dogs." 

For  the  forty  years  the  British  had  been  in 
Egypt  they  had  neglected  lower  education  and 
spent  Egyptian  money  only  for  higher  schools  to 
train  their  clerks  and  educate  an  overdose  of 
lawyers.  But  there  had  been  no  great  outcry 
from  the  Egyptians. 

Now  it  was  different.  Now  there  was  a  nation- 
al appeal  for  universal  education.  There  was  an 
awakened  interest  among  rich  and  educated 
Egyptians  for  lowly  Egypt.  There  was  a  new 
national  consciousness. 

This  from  a  mud  village  along  the  sleepy  old 

48 


THE  NEW  EELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

Nile.  It  was  the  voice  of  Egypt  and  these  men 
were  talking  for  niilhons  of  simple  farmer  folks. 
In  other  villages  and  in  the  big  cities  I  heard 
echoes  of  the  same  words. 

It  wasn't  a  question  of  what  was  best  or  right 
or  fair — it  was  the  question  of  a  national  impulse. 
These  people  wanted  to  run  their  own  affairs 
their  own  way.  It  was  a  national  impulse  that 
gained  a  driving  force  from  the  resentment  of 
one  of  the  strongest  religions  in  the  world — 
Islamism.  Fundamentally  Islamism  is  opposed 
to  Christian  Europe  and  this  new  idea  of  Eastern 
Nationalism  only  enlarges  this  gulf  between  the 
two  great  groups. 

Of  the  thirteen  million  Egyptians  probably 
ninety  per  cent,  belong  to  the  two  or  three  differ- 
ent branches  of  the  Moslem  faith.  There  are 
some  eight  hundred  thousand  Copts — the  relics 
of  a  very  early  Christian  faith — but  just  as  in 
India  where  the  Hindus  and  Moslems  have  joined 
together,  so  here  in  Egypt  the  Moslems  and  most 
of  the  Christians  are  now  united  in  their  fight 
for  independence. 

During  the  war  there  was  no  trouble  of  conse- 
quence. Egypt  was  loyal,  filled  her  quotas,  raised 
great  labor  corps,  and  stuck.  With  victory  for 
the  British  came  an  immediate  demand  for  the 
recognition  of  Egyptian  independence.  Zaghlul 
Pasha,  the  most  influential  Egyptian  politician, 
asked  for  permission  to  take  a  delegation  to  Paris 

49 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

to  press  Egyptian  claims  before  the  coining  Peace 
Conference.  This  was  November  13,  1918,  and 
already  they  call  it  Independence  Day  in  Egypt. 

Instead  of  landing  in  Paris,  Zaghlul,  Egypt's 
hero,  eventually  was  taken  to  Malta.  A  terrible 
flare  of  revolt  and  bloodshed  and  race  hatred 
was  the  result.  Schools  struck,  government 
clerks  refused  to  work,  and  the  whole  country 
dropped  like  a  plunmiet  into  a  bitter  boycott 
against  everything  that  had  to  do  with  the  British 
or  their  government  of  Egypt. 

Friends  hearing  where  Zaghlul  had  been  taken, 
went  to  his  home  and  told  his  wife  that  he  was  in 
Malta  and  safe. 

**What  do  I  care  about  news  of  my  husband," 
she  is  said  to  have  cried.  **I  care  only  for  Egypt. 
As  long  as  she  is  in  slavery  I  have  no  interest  in 
my  husband's  health  or  his  whereabouts." 

And  this  was  in  the  dying  East  where  women 
still  hide  their  faces  behind  veils  and  hide  their 
lives  and  hearts  behind  the  eternal  black  curtains 
of  outworn  traditions  and  cruel  superstitions. 

Children,  schoolboys  and  girls,  flocked  through 
the  streets,  screaming  their  words  "Vehvia 
istiklad^' — ^Long  live  Independence!  For  four 
months  there  w^as  not  a  school  in  Egypt  open. 
Ignorant  cotton  farmers,  like  the  fellaheen  in  the 
Nile  villages  I  had  visited,  burned  buildings  and 
bridges  and  tore  up  railroad  tracks.  Many  of 
them  had  only  their  bare  hands  to  fight  with,  but 

50 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

they  fought  mth  them.  Finally  the  revolt  was 
put  doMTi  AA^ith  a  considerable  loss  of  life,  and 
Zaghlul  A\dth  his  Egyptian  delegation  was  even- 
tually permitted  to  go  to  Paris. 

Lord  Milner,  at  that  time  colonial  secretary, 
came  to  Egj^t  to  make  a  careful  investigation. 
All  Egypt  boycotted  him,  saying  that  their  only 
spokesman  was  Zaghlul  and  that  he  must  deal 
mth  him.  Eventually  the  two  men  were  brought 
together  and  a  plan  for  sweeping  changes  in  the 
government  of  Egypt  arrived  at. 

But  it  was  not  to  be.  In  the  spring  of  1921  Lord 
Milner  was  eased  out  of  the  British  Cabinet  and 
all  that  he  had  done  toward  a  fair  and  satisfactory 
Egyptian  settlement  upset.  And  so  again  the 
fires  of  revolt  burn  up  and  do^vn  the  great  Nile 
Valley.  Again  there  are  Eg\^tian  mobs  and 
again  British  Tommies  are  ordered  to  fire  into 
them. 

Zaghlul  Pasha,  the  hero  of  millions  of  common 
Egyptians,  arrested  and  spirited  away,  is  held  in 
exile  in  Ceylon,  but  his  spirit  still  remains  the 
inspiration  for  Egypt. 

''If  the  proposals  for  Egj^^tian  independence 
fall  through  we  shall  use  every  weapon  of  bitter 
protest  and  resistance  we  can  find,"  one  of  the 
leaders  in  Cairo  explained  to  me.  ""VYe  refuse 
to  be  ruled  longer  against  our  mil.  "We  are  in 
no  mood  to  be  fooled  with.  Ninety  per  cent,  of 
our  people  are  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder  in 

51 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

these  demands  for  independence,  and  if  Britain 
refuse  to  recognize  us  then  we  shall  start  fresh 
revolts.  They  may  for  the  present  take  only  the 
form  of  intense  passive  resistance  after  the  man- 
ner of  Gandhi  and  India,  but  violence  may  break 
out  at  any  time.  There  is  a  small  group  here, 
mostly  rich  men,  who  want  England  to  retain  her 
grip  on  Egypt,  but  they  are  more  than  offset  by 
the  extreme  radicals  who  want  England  to  leave, 
lock,  stock  and  barrel." 

This  is  nationalism,  but  it  is  nationalism  made 
of  the  bricks  of  race  feelings  and  bound  together 
by  the  mortor  of  Moslem  religion.  It  is  difficult 
for  the  western  world  to  realize  that  nationalism 
is  a  new  thing  for  the  East.  There,  for  thousands 
of  years,  the  loyalty  has  been  to  family  and  vil- 
lage and  tribe  and  religion — and  possibly  to  king. 
But  until  now  there  has  never  been  that  pride  of 
country  and  flag  that  the  West  has  developed. 

During  the  war  Moslem  fought  against  Moslem, 
and  the  German-conceived  idea  of  a  great  Holy 
War  of  Moslems  against  Christians  fell  flat  like 
the  rest  of  Germany's  dreams.  The  Arabs 
around  the  holy  Moslem  city  of  Mecca  followed 
their  King  Feisal  and  fought  alongside  British 
Tommies  against  the  German-led  Turks.  When 
British  planes  dropped  propaganda  pamphlets 
within  the  crumbling  walls  of  old  Jerusalem, 
Moslems  thought  Britain  meant  her  high-sound- 
ing   phrases    of    self-determination — and    these 

52 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

Moslem  desertions  helped  materially  to  bring 
General  Allenby  victory.  Since  then  they  have 
had  a  large  dose  of  the  white  man  of  Europe,  and 
now  they  are  dreaming  of  the  good  old  days  when 
they  had  only  the  indolent,  inefficient  Sick  Man 
of  Turkey  to  bother  them. 

I  spent  an  hour  or  two  in  a  tiny  harem — ^which 
sounds  naughty  and  romantic,  but  which  in  this 
instance  was  only  a  small  one-roomed  building 
alongside  the  beautiful  Mosque  of  Omar,  on  the 
site  of  King  Solomon's  temple  in  Jerusalem. 
Two  old  sheiks  met  me  there  and  we  squatted 
cross-legged  on  the  rug  and  talked  of  religion  and 
politics  and  Turkey  and  England  and  white  men 
and  things  in  general.  In  addition  to  these  two 
rich  and  prominent  elders,  a  pair  of  old  fellows, 
who  worked  around  the  mosque  came  in  and 
squatted  alongside  of  us — the  real  social  democ- 
racy of  Mohammedanism.  One  made  sweet,  thick 
Turkish  coffee  over  a  charcoal  brazier  and  served 
us ;  and  then  drank  out  of  the  same  little  bowl. 

**  Before  the  war  we  used  to  pray  to  God  to  rid 
us  of  the  Turks,  and  now  we  pray  God  to  rid  us 
of  the  English,"  one  of  the  elders  said  in  a  soft 
low  voice.  "The  British  promised  us  they  would 
free  us  from  the  Turks  and  help  us  establish  a 
great  Arabic  state.  We  Moslems  are  fully  seventy 
per  cent,  of  the  people  here,  but  instead  of  help- 
ing us  establish  an  Arabic  state  they  are  helping 
a  Zionist  minority  of  fifteen  per  cent,  to  rule  us. 

53 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

**We  mil  never  suffer  that,"  he  went  on. 
^'What  we  really  want  is  a  confederation  of  all 
the  Moslem  states  of  old  Turkey.  We  can  work 
out  our  o^vn  affairs  then.  We  can  have  our  reli- 
gion and  our  holy  shrines  and  yet  we  can  have 
nationalism  too." 

''And  about  Kemel  Pasha?"  I  asked,  referring 
to  the  dashing  young  Turk  who  refused  to  recog- 
nize the  Turkish  peace  treaty. 

The  elder  hesitated  for  a  moment.  "Of  course 
we  all  believe  in  him  now, ' '  he  answered.  * '  He 's 
fighting  our  battles  against  Europe."  They,  like 
the  rest  of  the  great,  sleepy  East,  were  tired  of 
Europe's  interference.  They  wanted  the  West 
to  leave  them  alone. 

While  in  Palestine  it  may  not  be  fundamentally 
a  racial  or  color  question  or  a  religious  question, 
yet  it  certainly  has  to  do  with  the  people  of  that 
district  running  their  own  affairs.  The  fact  that 
the  immediate  peace  and  prosperity  of  the  com- 
munity probably  depends  on  the  presence  of  Brit- 
ish troops  and  Pax  Britainiac,  does  not  at  all 
affect  the  fundamental  proposition.  The  people 
native  there  simply  want  to  govern  themselves. 

Just  as  in  India  and  Egypt  where  different 
religions  and  sects  have  combined  to  gain  home 
rule,  so  there  in  those  sun-lit  holy  hills  of  Judas 
one  finds  the  Christians,  numbering  some  fifteen 
per  cent.,  combined  with  the  Moslems,  numbering 
certainly  seventy  per  cent,.,  in  a  Moslem-Christian 

54 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

League.  It  is  a  combination  to  oppose  the  grow- 
ing strength  of  the  Zionists  who — within  Pales- 
tine— have  no  real  power  without  the  support  and 
drive  of  the  British  Government  and  the  British 
troops. 

The  white  man  has  interfered  again — and 
again  he  has  gained  only  deep  hatred  as  a  reward. 
Go  east  across  the  Jordan  and  hit  the  long  dusty 
trail  to  that  ancient  land  between  the  Tigris  and 
the  Euphrates.  Here  Europe,  searching  for  oil 
and  new  cotton-fields  and  undeveloped  markets, 
has  driven  deep  her  stakes  of  influence — and  the 
farmers  of  the  great  valley  and  the  silent  Arabs 
of  the  deserts  have  said  "NO!  we  don't  want  you 
or  your  governments  or  your  western  ways." 

Nationalism  is  something  brand-new  here.  too. 
There  is  only  the  nationalism  of  the  tent  and  the 
flock.  There  is  almost  as  much  difference  be- 
tween these  various  Arab  tribes  as  between  the 
several  peoples  of  Europe. 

Roughly  speaking,  there  are  three  million  peo- 
ple in  Mesopotamia,  divided  up  in  six  great  tribes 
and  some  fifty  smaller  ones.  But  they  are  all 
men  of  one  color  and  pretty  much  of  one  religion, 
and  they  are  all  against  British  interference. 

It  is  a  romantic  gamble — this  billion  dollar 
gamble  that  England  is  taking  in  Mesopotamia. 
After  all,  the  oil  that  is  to  pay  the  piper  is  of  un- 
certain quantity,  but  if  it  flows  full  and  black  a 
pipe  line  stretched  from  the  oil  fields  to  Allepo 

55 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

on  the  Mediterranean  would  only  be  a  stretch  of 
some  five  hundred  fifty  miles — an  eight-inch  pipe 
line,  eighteen  inches  under  the  ground,  mth  only 
two  great  pumping  stations,  would  do  it.  And 
the  British  fleet  would  be  two  or  three  weeks 
nearer  its  precious  fuel  supply.  And  control  of 
Arabia,  too,  would  guarantee  a  short-cut  railroad 
route  from  the  sea  to  India. 

But  all  this  is  mere  speculation,  while  the  deep 
growing  hate  of  the  East  and  the  Near  East  is 
anything  but  speculation.  As  I  have  tried  to 
make  clear,  the  Moslems  offer  the  closest  bound, 
most  virile  organization  against  the  West.  There 
are  some  three  hundred  million  of  them  scattered 
through  Southern  Asia  and  across  Arabia  and 
Northern  Africa. 

They  have  no  great  central  organization  or  di- 
recting force,  but  they  have  a  deep-rooted  reli- 
gion that  lends  itself  easily  to  belligerency.  Dur- 
ing the  war  the  Central  Powers  attempted  to  turn 
it  into  a  Holy  War  against  the  Allies,  but  failed 
because  the  resentment  against  Europe  was  only 
beginning  to  seethe  and  because  in  many  districts 
the  native  Moslems  were  bitter  against  their  own 
Moslem  masters — ^to  wit,  the  Arab  Moslems 
against  the  Turkish  Moslems. 

With  the  war  ended  and  the  European  nations 
splitting  the  spoils  of  the  Near  East  among  them- 
selves, the  Moslems  turned  against  Europe.  At 
present    all    throughout    the    Moslem    countries 

56 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

there  has  been  great  ranting  and  waving  of  arms 
over  what  is  termed  the  Khalifat  injustices. 

This  is  especially  true  in  India  where  the  sev- 
enty million  Moslems  have  been  whipped  into  a 
fury  of  religious  hate  by  their  leaders  over  what 
they  believe  to  be  the  grave  injustices  done  by 
England  against  them. 

Mohammed  Ali,  who  shares  with  his  fighting 
brother,  Shaukat  Ali,  the  distinction  of  leading 
Indian  Mohammedans,  talked  with  me  a  long  time 
about  all  these  questions.  This  man,  Mohammed 
Ali,  is  a  tremendous  big,  thick  chested,  black 
bearded  man,  who  is  frankly  out  to  break  Britain 
and  gain  independence  for  India  at  any  cost. 
Late  in  1921  these  brothers  were  thrown  in  jail 
charged  with  preaching  sedition  among  Indian 
troops. 

*'We  are  body  and  soul  in  the  revolution  to  free 
India  from  Britain,"  he  screamed  at  me  when 
I  talked  to  him.  *'We  are  out  to  abolish  the  pres- 
ent system  of  British  govermnent  in  India,  law 
or  no  law.  We  are  mth  Mahatma  Gandhi  and  his 
non-violent  non-cooperating  revolt,  but  if  non-co- 
operation fails  then  we  seventy  million  Moslems 
are  allowed  by  our  faith  but  two  courses — we 
must  either  migrate  from  the  country  or  declare 
a  holy  war  against  the  British." 

Mohammed  thundered  away  about  what  India 
had  suffered  from  British  rule  and  gently  I  led 
him  back  on  the  track.  ** What's  all  this  Khalifat 
business!"  I  asked. 

57 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

"Wlien  England  declared  war  against  Tur- 
key," he  explained,  *'she  announced  to  India  that 
the  war  involved  no  religious  question  and  the 
holy  places  of  Islam,  Mecca,  Jerusalem,  etc., 
would  remain  free  as  long  as  Turkey  did  not  in- 
terfere with  pilgrims  visiting  these  holy  places. 
Turkey  never  stopped  pilgrims,  yet  to-day  despite 
repeated  pledges,  all  the  holy  places  of  Islam  are 
directly  or  indirectly  in  British  hands. 

''The  Turkish  treaty  aims  at  the  complete  elim- 
ination of  the  Khalifat,  which  is  the  church  or- 
ganization mth  a  head  who  enjoys  temporal 
power.  The  sultan  has  for  years  been  the  ac- 
cepted head. 

''During  the  World  War  thousands  of  Indian 
Moslems  fought  for  the  British  on  the  definite 
pledge  from  Lloyd  George  that  we  were  not  fight- 
ing Turkey  to  deprive  her  of  Constantinople  or 
the  rich  and  renowned  lands  of  Thrace,  which  are 
predominantly  Turkish  in  race. 

"All  these  pledges  have  been  violated;  the  holy 
places  have  been  attacked ;  the  sultan  detained  in 
Constantinople  as  a  sort  of  hostage ;  Thrace  and 
Smyrna,  the  richest  parts  of  Asia  Minor,  handed 
to  Greece,  while  over  the  holy  places  of  Islam, 
mandates  have  been  established  which  neither 
Palestine,  Syria  or  Mesopotamia  want.  England 
has  been  to  blame  for  all  this  and  only  by  restor- 
ing the  power  of  the  head  of  the  Moslem  faith  will 
Indian  Mohammedans  be  satisfied.     Let  all  the 

58 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

different  districts  of  Asia  Minor  form  their  own 
governments  with  as  much  autonomy  as  they 
wish,  all  to  fuse  in  some  federation  with  the 
Turks.  Until  England  rights  these  Khalifat 
wrongs  and  gives  India  home  rule,  there  will  be 
no  truce.    We  -will  accept  no  compromise." 

But  these  are  fine  colorful  words.  They  are 
words  to  thrill  Moslems  and  to  make  them  hate 
the  British.  I  talked  with  many  educated  and 
intelligent  Moslem  leaders  about  them.  A  few 
of  these  leaders  freely  admitted  they  were  just 
words — words  to  stir  up  the  ignorant  common 
Mohammedan  against  foreign  domination. 

Which  is  to  say  they  were  using  religion  as  a 
political  weapon.  Religion  comes  as  the  last  of 
all  the  great  surges  that  make  men  die  in  num- 
bers— struggle  for  existence,  race,  nationalism 
and  religion.  Yet  religious  wars  have  been  and 
can  be  as  bitter  and  desperate  as  any  other 
struggle. 

After  all,  religion  is  deep — and  nowhere  are  its 
roots  so  firmly  implanted  as  in  the  backwaters 
of  civilization.  It  was  in  the  Khyber  Pass — the 
great  gateway  between  Central  Asia  and  India — 
that  this  struck  me  most  forcibly. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  and  the  cool  of  the 
approaching  evening  was  keeping  pace  with  the 
lengthening  shadows  of  the  great  bare  mountains. 
Every  rock  and  shrub  was  reeking  with  romance. 
It  was  the  Pass  of  the  Ages.    Through  its  tor- 

59 


THE  EISINO  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

turous  fifty  miles  of  narrow  road  the  Arions — the 
white  men  from  some  early  cradle  of  civilization 
— had  fought  their  way  southward  into  the  rich 
plains  of  India.  They  had  stayed  on  as  rulers, 
and  slowly  the  blazing  Indian  sun  had  browned 
them.  To-day,  ten  or  fifteen  thousand  years 
later,  they  are  still  the  ruling  caste  of  all  India — 
the  Brahmins.  And  hundreds  of  years  later  the 
hard  riding  Eastern  nomads,  thirsty  for  conquest 
and  loot,  had  whipped  their  shaggy  ponies 
through  this  same  Pass  of  Romance. 

No  other  single  spot  in  the  world  could  tell 
such  tales  of  wonder  and  war  and  adventure  and 
romance;  its  deep  sides  still  echo  these  tales. 
And  Romance  and  Adventure  still  live  there. 

This  day  the  sun  was  just  dropping  and  eve- 
ning now  would  come  on  with  a  rush.  The  foot 
road  and  the  motor  road  that  for  miles  run  one 
above  the  other  on  the  mountain  sides,  like  par- 
allel snakes,  drew  together  and  now  ran  side  by 
side.  A  tired  dusty  camel-train  choked  the  soft 
foot  road.  They  were  carrying  rugs  from  Bok- 
hara and  fruits  from  Afghanistan  and  Romance 
from  Back  There.  Suddenly  they  halted  and  the 
camel  men  silently  spread  out  their  worn  and 
dusty  prayer-rugs  and  began  their  evening  devo- 
tion. 

These  were  men — men  of  the  Old  East — tired 
men,  brave  men,  men  of  different  standards  of 
conduct  and  life  from  us  of  the  West.     They 

60 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

wouldn't  have  hesitated  in  the  least  to  have 
robbed  me  or  killed  me — and  here  they  were  on 
their  knees  before  the  dropping  sun.  Five  times 
each  day  they  unrolled  their  prayer-mats.  This 
is  the  religion  that  to-day  stands  like  a  citadel 
against  the  interference  of  the  West.  Three  hun- 
dred million  obey  its  sacred  orders. 

That  night  I  was  chatting  with  a  British  offi- 
cial in  his  office  at  Peshawr.  He  was  telling  me 
about  the  two  million  Moslem  tribesmen  who  live 
in  tiny  villages  perched  like  eagles'  nests  among 
these  great  hills  of  the  Himalayas  of  Northwest- 
ern India.  He  explained  how  backward  they 
were,  how  brutal  their  civilization ;  he  told  about 
the  family  and  village  blood  feuds  that  are  passed 
do^vn  from  one  generation  to  another  sometimes 
resulting  in  the  extermination  of  whole  families. 

He  explained,  too,  how  these  two  million  tribes- 
men, vnth  their  four  hundred  thousand  men,  all 
armed  mth  rifles  of  some  sort,  and  all  fighters 
by  instinct  and  wish,  are  the  most  difficult  mili- 
tary problem  that  the  British  Government  in 
India  has  had  to  solve  in  the  past.  Religious  al- 
most to  a  degree  of  fanaticism,  they  have  always 
been  at  the  call  of  their  half -mad  mnllalis — Mos- 
lem leaders — as  well  as  being  amenable  to  money 
and  religious  influences  from  their  Moslem  broth- 
ers in  the  great  backward  country  of  Afghanis- 
tan, lying  to  their  north  and  west,  separating 
India  from  Russia  proper. 

61 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

These  different  tribes,  with  their  tribal  hates 
and  jealousies,  have  been  kept  in  hand  through 
a  liberal  use  of  money  and  the  British  Indian 
Army.  Peace  here  has  been  bought.  In  the  past 
money  has  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  keeping 
peace  with  Afghanistan,  as  well.  For  almost  a 
half-century  the  great  duel  for  the  control  of 
Afghanistan  went  on  between  the  British  and 
the  Russians.  By  the  power  of  persuasion  and 
the  threat  of  invasion  and  the  liberal  use  of  money 
the  amir  of  Afghanistan  had  been  kept  under  the 
spell  of  the  British  political  agents. 

In  1876  the  old  amir  consolidated  the  country 
following  an  Afghan  war.  Toward  the  end  of 
the  last  century  he  died  and  his  son  succeeded 
him.  As  in  the  case  of  his  father,  the  British  paid 
him  for  his  loyalty  and  for  continuing  to  act  as 
a  buffer  state  between  India  and  Russia. 

During  the  Great  War  the  amir  flirted  with 
German  and  Turkish  missions,  but  all  in  all 
played  fair  with  the  British.  He  could  handle  his 
foreign  affairs  fairly  satisfactorily,  but  when  it 
came  to  palace  intrigues  and  family  quarrels  he 
wasn't  quite  man  enough. 

His  favorite  wife,  the  mother  of  his  third  son, 
jealous  of  her  waning  power,  engineered  a  con- 
spiracy with  her  son,  which  ended  with  the  old 
amir  getting  the  poisoned  coffee  handed  to  him. 
A  brother  of  the  old  amir  started  to  take  a  hand 
then,   but   the    third   son   grabbed   the    capital, 

62 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

Kabul,  captured  the  army  and  the  treasury  and 
throwing  the  uncle  and  one  of  his  own  brothers 
into  prison,  declared  himself  amir.  This  hap- 
pened in  February,  1919,  and  is  interesting  only 
as  it  gives  a  sidelight  on  the  adventure  of  politics 
in  Afghan. 

The  young  amir  profited  by  all  the  anti-British 
sentiment  and  believing  that  the  revolt  in  India 
was  certain,  started  a  little  private  war  of  his 
own  against  the  British.  Our  Khyber  Pass, 
highly  amused,  was  the  scene. 

The  British  were  not  worried  by  the  amir's 
stage  army,  but  they  were  worried  over  what  the 
four  hundred  thousand  armed  Moslem  tribesmen 
of  this  Northwest  Frontier  would  do  if  the  thing 
was  put  on  a  religious  basis  and  a  Holy  War 
declared.  So  a  peace  was  hurried  up ;  money  was 
passed  and  a  settlement  patched  up. 

But  the  four  hundred  thousand  tribesmen,  with 
their  fighting  religion,  still  squat  in  the  doorway 
of  their  tiny  walled  villages  or,  slipping  out  into 
the  sunshine,  take  pot  shots  at  British  Tommies 
from  behind  friendly  boulders.  As  long  as  Bri- 
tain remains  in  India  these  tribesmen  mil  be  a 
growing  menace.  They  are  a  strange  breed  and 
they  bring  strange  men  into  the  world. 

This  night  as  I  sat  with  the  British  official  one 
of  his  Moslem  soldiers  came  into  the  office  and 
announced  that  a  boy  was  outside  and  wanted  to 
see  him.    The  Englishman  ordered  Mm  to  be  ad- 

63 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

mitted  and  suggested  that  I  wait  and  see  what  it 
was  all  about. 

In  a  minute  or  two  a  little  fellow  of  about  seven 
or  eight  years  stepped  into  the  room  and  without 
the  degrading  subservience  one  sees  throughout 
all  Hindu  districts,  boldly  stepped  forward  and 
without  the  slightest  embarrassment  walked  to 
the  official's  desk. 

"Did  you  send  for  me,  sir?"  he  asked  directly. 

**Yes.  Your  father  was  an  Indian  soldier  and 
died  in  service.  I  have  five  hundred  rupees  that 
the  great  British  Government  has  sent  me  to  give 
to  you,  his  only  son,  as  reward  for  his  service. 
Do  you  want  this  money  now?" 

The  boy  hesitated.  He  had  walked  a  dozen 
miles  along  the  mountain  trails  in  answer  to  this 
summons  from  the  great  white  official.  It  was 
probably  the  first  time  he  had  ever  been  that  far 
away  from  his  tiny  village  with  its  mud  wall  and 
its  adobe  tower,  where  every  one  gathered  at 
night  for  defense  against  a  possible  raid  from 
some  enemy  village. 

He'd  never  seen  a  picture-show — he  didn't 
know  there  was  such  a  thing.  Life  was  very  real 
and  very  hard  for  him,  and  often  very  bitter. 
The  civilization  that  was  molding  him  was  a  civ- 
ilization of  thousands  of  years  ago — and  one  of 
bleak  hills  and  biting  days.  It  was  a  poor  civili- 
zation compared  to  our  o^vn  electric-heated,  self- 
starter,  rubber-tired  civilization. 

64 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  NATIONALISM 

''Shall  I  keep  the  money  for  you  or  do  you 
want  me  to  give  it  to  you  now?"  the  wise  and 
kindly  official  asked  again. 

''You  keep  it  for  me,"  this  seven-year-old  hill- 
boy  finally  replied.  "If  you  give  it  to  me  either 
my  relatives  will  steal  it,  or  my  mother  will  take 
it  from  me  and  spend  it  on  her  new  husband. 
You  keep  it  for  me  and  some  day  when  I  am  a 
man  I  will  buy  a  rifle  with  it. ' ' 

I  smiled  when  I  thought  of  the  candy  and  the 
red  balloons  and  toy  street-cars  my  own  little  boy 
would  have*  demanded,  had  he,  of  the  rubber- 
tired  age,  been  offered  money.  Then  a  lump  came 
into  my  throat  when  I  thought  of  this  splendid 
half-man  going  back  on  foot  to  his  filthy  mud 
village  to  dream  there  of  the  day  when  he  would 
be  old  enough  to  go  again  to  the  white  official 
and  get  his  money  and  buy  a  contraband  rifle  and 
settle  some  ancient  family  quarrel — or  a  new 
quarrel  of  race  and  country  and  religion  a  million 
times  greater. 

I  wondered  which  quarrel  this  boy  of  seven 
would  be  busy  with  at  seventeen. 


CHAPTER  III 

YOUNG  CHINA 

I  HOLD  that  it  is  something  to  discover  that  an 
ancient  race  is  really  young  and  virile  after  all, 
and  that  a  nation  that  had  been  thought  back- 
ward, decadent  and  inferior  has  greatness  and 
majesty  and  humanness. 

This,  to  me,  is  China — Young  China — New 
China.  And  this  that  follows  is  the  story  of  the 
tremendous  revolution,  the  great  renaissance, 
the  awakening  of  the  millions  of  common  Chinese 
from  the  sleep  and  superstitions  of  centuries. 

Four  hundred  million  of  them  there  are. 
That's  four  times  as  many  people  as  we  have  in 
America — and  a  good  deal  more  than  the  total 
population  of  all  Europe,  excluding  Russia — and 
within  one  hundred  and  fifty  million  of  the  white 
population  of  the  entire  world. 

Theirs  is  the  oldest  civilization;  they  are  the 
greatest  propagandists;  they  are  the  most  suc- 
cessful colonizers;  they  are  the  most  industrious 
of  the  nations ;  they  are  the  master  egoists ;  they 
have  the  greatest  power  of  resistance — and  they 
are  the  champion  smilers. 

Down  in  the  Shanghai  country  I  saw  a  Chinese 

6^ 


YOUNG  CHINA 

version  of  our  own  TJncle  Tom^s  Cabin.  The 
man  who  transported  it  across  the  Pacific  was 
not  bound  down  by  any  of  the  ordinary  ethics  of 
authorship.  The  colored  folks  were  kept  intact 
and  played  by  Chinese  actors  without  burnt  cork, 
but  Simon  Legree  was  none  other  than  Yaman- 
iato  Nakagawa,  a  Japanese  slave  driver  imported 
direct  from  the  rice  paddies. 

This  was  where  the  plot  thickened.  Yaman- 
iato,  the  Simon  Legree  of  the  piece,  gave  old 
Chinese  Uncle  Tom  a  terrible  whaling  and  then 
practised  on  the  other  slaves.  The  audience,  busy 
with  munching  their  watermelon  seeds,  didn't 
mind  it  the  least  until  they  discovered  that  these 
coolies  were  getting  just  what  they  deserved  for 
permitting  the  Japanese  to  come  into  their  coun- 
try and  bully  them.  Then  they  howled  in  good 
Chinese :    * ' Kill  him !    Throw  him  out ! ' ' 

The  Japanese  menace  had  hit  home.  It  was 
evident  that  the  only  thing  to  do  was  for  all  China 
to  go  on  an  anti-Japanese  strike  and  force  the 
little  tan  cousins  to  go  back  to  their  island. 

Propaganda,  of  course!  I  mentioned  above 
that  China  was  the  greatest  propagandist  in  the 
world.  Consider  what  she  has  done  to  the  visitors 
living  within  her  borders. 

There  are  some  forty  thousand  or  fifty  thou- 
sand foreigners  residing  in  China  and  every  one 
of  them  stands  ready  to  make  any  sacrifice  to  the 
end  that  China  may  be  preserved  from  the  ambi- 

67 


THE  EISINO  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

tions  of  Japan.  Let  an  innocent  traveler  show 
the  slightest  sympathy  for  Japan's  point  of  view 
and  the  wrath  of  the  gods  falls  on  his  head.  A 
hundred  resident  foreigners  take  his  comment  as 
a  personal  affront.  Long  before  he  passes  half- 
way through  the  treaty  ports  he's  either  been 
branded  *'N.  G."  by  his  own  countrymen  or  else 
he's  been  converted  into  a  Chinese  booster,  and 
has  joined  the  long  list  of  volunteers  who  stand 
ready  at  any  moment  to  give  their  lives  for  China 
against  Japan. 

Nothing  wrong  with  that  only  the  Chinese 
themselves  are  far  too  philosophic  to  worry  them- 
selves sick  over  such  a  question  as  Japanese  in- 
trusion when  everything  is  going  to  come  out  all 
right  in  the  end.  Simply  outwait  them — or  play 
one  against  the  other  or  let  the  thing  drag.  Why 
rush  out  and  get  shot  up?  Smile  your  way 
through — and  let  the  other  fellow  stop  the  bullets. 

After  all,  he  is  a  tremendously  human  and  in- 
teresting and  wise  fellow,  this  smiling  Chinese. 
There's  an  old  saying  that  a  smile  will  take  you 
further  in  China  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 
I  believe  it — and  a  smile  takes  the  Chinese  fur- 
ther, too.  It  has  taken  them  ten  thousand  years 
down  the  long  trail  and  will  take  them  another 
ten  thousand. 

But  our  friend  One  Lung  not  only  smiles  but  he 
works.  He  is  industrious  beyond  belief.  He 
works  harder  and  longer  and  more  consistently 

68 


YOUNG  CHINA 

and  for  less  pay  than  any  one  else  in  the  world. 
Many  of  us  think  of  the  Japanese  as  being  master 
toilers :  they  would  starve  in  China.  Incidentally, 
Japan  has  her  own  exclusion  law  against  Chinese, 
and  during  the  World  War  when  a  Japanese  mine 
owner  imported  some  twenty-seven  thousand 
Chinese  laborers  the  Japanese  Government 
turned  them  around  and  waltzed  them  right  back 
to  the  continent. 

And  they  really  are  the  greatest  egoists  in  the 
world.  Certainly  three  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
million  out  of  the  four  hundred  million  consider 
their  culture  and  civilization  with  its  five  thou- 
sand years  of  history  as  the  beginning  and  end  of 
all  things.  A  Chinese  houseboy  Tcnoivs  he  is 
superior  in  every  way  to  the  foreigner  whom  he 
serves.  The  houseboy  can  cheat  him  and  not  be 
found  out;  he  can  loaf  on  the  job  and  not  be  fired ; 
he  can  divide  up  among  four  Chinese  men  the 
house  work  that  one  servant  could  easily  do.  And 
the  same  idea  goes  right  on  up  through  the  dif- 
ferent social  classes. 

What  I'm  trying  to  say  is  that  fundamentally 
China  believes  in  herself.  Way  dowai  deep  in  the 
heart  of  the  Chinese  people  there  is  no  great  fear 
regarding  Japan  or  any  one  else.  They  do,  of 
course,  fear  for  the  immediate  future,  but  basic- 
ally and  fundamentally  they  believe  themselves 
vastly  superior  to  any  race. 

I  took  a  ten-day  journey  with  a  high  Chinese 

69 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

railroad  official.  This  man  held  two  degrees 
from  American  universities  and  he  was  about  as 
thoroughly  Americanized  as  any  Oriental  ever 
becomes — which  is  about  ten  per  cent. 

We  talked  and  we  sparred  and  we  played  poker 
with  words  and  finally  the  last  day  we  were 
together  I  told  him  it  was  my  opinion  that  China 
would  have  to  help  herself,  that  nobody  was  going 
to  do  much  for  her.  It  was  all  right  to  ask  for 
advice,  and  good  mil,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing, 
but  in  the  end  she  would  have  to  take  care  of  her 
Japanese  menace  herself. 

''Well,"  he  said  slowly  after  a  pause,  **we  are 
not  worrying  so  much  about  Japan  as  you  may 
think.  Of  course  things  are  very  discouraging 
now,  but  we  are  awakening  the  consciousness  of 
China  and  for  the  first  time  instilling  an  idea  of 
nationalism  and  patriotism  into  our  common  peo- 
ple— and  we  are  doing  it  through  preaching  Jap- 
anese hatred.  We'll  get  along  all  right.  It 
may  take  us  fifty  or  a  hundred  or  possibly  several 
hundred  years,  but  in  the  end  our  superiority  will 
tell  and  our  civilization  will  dominate  theirs." 

That's  China!  Here  is  Japan  bribing  govern- 
ment officials,  shoving  her  mshes  dowm  Chinese 
throats  with  bayonets,  but  deep  in  their  celestial 
hearts  not  one  drop  of  real  fear.  The  corrupted 
Peking  officials  who  would  sell  China  to  the  high- 
est bidder  and  who  may  at  this  very  moment  be 
taking  their  orders  from  the  Japanese  minister, 

70 


YOUNG  CHINA 

believe  Japanese  domination  is  only  a  temporary 
affair. 

Maybe  they  are  right.  China  understands  the 
expensive  lesson  that  Germany  has  been  taught 
— while  Japan  has  only  begun  to  learn  it.  And 
China  knows  that  if  she  waits  long  enough  she  can 
outwait  even  Japan.  She  believes  that  the  whirl- 
igig of  time  may  bring  forth  some  champion  who 
wdll  fight  her  battles  for  her,  perchance  uncon- 
sciously, just  as  the  Allies  fought  her  battles 
against  Germany.  In  her  five  thousand  years 
she 's  seen  young  champions  by  the  score — Greece, 
Rome,  Spain,  Portugal,  Holland,  Germany,  all  of 
them  in  turn — conquer  and  dominate  for  a  while 
and  then  go  do^vn.  And  while  others  have  been 
fighting  and  struggling  she  has  quietly  and  peace- 
fully penetrated  all  of  Eastern  Asia. 

No  colonizer  in  the  world  compares  with  her. 
Her  people  are  slipping  into  Siberia  by  the  thou- 
sands; at  first  they  are  the  hewers  of  wood  and 
the  drawers  of  water — then  they  become  the  small 
retailers — then  the  wholesalers — then  the  big 
merchants.  Everywhere  throughout  Eastern 
Asia  and  in  many  of  the  islands  of  the  sea  it  has 
come  about  in  this  way — the  world  fights  while 
China  trades  and  colonizes  and  propagates. 

They  work  like  a  great  family  of  ants  attack- 
ing a  sleeping  enemy;  slowly,  methodically,  end- 
lessly they  creep  over  their  victim.  Nothing 
daunts  them — nothing  can  stop  them.     They're 

71 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

a  superior  race.  They're  the  only  race  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  that  has  ever  completely  ab- 
sorbed the  Jews.    It 's  a  clean  record. 

Some  two  thousand  years  ago  there  was  a  large 
Jemsh  colony  in  China.  To-day  every  trace  of 
it  is  gone.  Great  China  slowly,  patiently  digested 
it. 

Patience — ^probably  that  describes  China  bet- 
ter than  any  other  single  word.  It's  the  keynote 
to  their  home  life,  their  national  life  and  the  very 
pass  word  to  their  foreign  policies — patience  and 
a  certain  deep-rooted  sense  of  justice  and  a 
knowledge  that  things  that  are  not  settled  rightly 
are  never  really  settled. 

For  fifty  centuries  these  two  things — patience 
and  justice — and  the  power  of  "face"  have  run 
China.  Chinese  "face" — class,  or  standing  or  the 
respect  of  your  fellow  man — is  the  strangest 
moral  code  in  the  world  and  one  of  the  most  effec- 
tive. China  has  never  had  written  laws  as  we 
understand  them.  In  many  ways  her  commu- 
nities have  been  the  only  examples  in  the  world 
of  pure  anarchial  states.  They've  simply  run 
themselves.  The  central  government  has  let  the 
provinces  go  ahead  unheeded  as  long  as  the 
provincial  governors  have  "come  across"  regu- 
larly with  the  taxes.  The  governors,  in  turn, 
haven't  bothered  the  district  magistrates  so  long 
as  they  passed  the  tribute  on  up ;  and  the  district 
magistrates  have  never  interfered  with  the  peo- 

72 


YOUNG  CHINA 

pie  at  all  so  long  as  they  stood  quietly  while  the 
taxes  were  tied  on  them.  It's  all  amounted  to  the 
simple  formula  of  the  people  saying,  "You  leave 
us  alone  and  we'll  pay  you  taxes,"  while  the 
rulers  have  echoed  back,  "You  pay  taxes  and 
we'll  leave  you  alone." 

And  T\^thin  the  individual  communities  the 
great  moral  law  that 's  kept  them  going  peacefully 
and  securely  has  been  the  law  of  "face."  Con- 
fucius taught  an  inverted  Golden  Rule  that  said, 
"Do  not  do  to  others  what  you  would  not  have 
them  do  to  you,"  and  the  unwritten  code  tacked 
on  to  this  "or  you'll  lose  face." 

A  foreigner's  banking  partner  would  hesitate 
to  indulge  himself  in  too  sharp  a  deal  because  if 
he  were  found  out  he  would  lose  "face"  among 
his  fellows.  A  foreigner's  houseboy  doesn't  dare 
knock  do^vn  beyond  his  ten  per  cent.,  because  if 
he  is  caught  and  discharged  he'd  lose  a  great  deal 
of  "face"  among  other  houseboys.  A  rich  man 
must  treat  wife  No.  2  according  to  custom  or  he 
loses  "face"  tremendously. 

China,  by  and  large,  is  run  on  "face,"  and  it 
works  out  vastly  better  than  it  sounds,  for,  fun- 
damentally, the  Chinese  are  an  honest  and  up- 
right people.  They  look  you  straight  in  the  eye — 
and  while  they  don't  tell  you  to  go  to  blazes  they 
do  smile  straight  at  you.  They're  superior — 
they're  not  the  downtrodden,  worthless,  spine- 
less people  the  story-books  say  they  are.    They 

73 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

couldn't  have  lived  and  resisted  pressure  as  they 
have  had  there  not  been  something  fine  and  great 
and  distinctly  superior  about  them. 

A  young  American  missionary  named  Jimmy 
Hunter,  who  used  to  be  champion  quarter  miler 
of  the  University  of  Illinois,  took  me  for  a  week's 
trip  into  the  district  to  the  north  of  Peking  to 
study  the  common  country  folk.  All  one  needs 
to  do  is  to  go  five  miles  away  from  the  railway 
or  from  a  treaty  city  to  drop  back  five  thousand 
years  into  the  very  center  of  ancient  China. 

We  had  a  springless  Peking  cart  drawn  by  a 
shaggy  Mongolian  pony,  and  we  split  our  time 
between  sitting  on  the  shaft  of  the  cart  and  rid- 
ing on  our  two  undersized  donkeys.  It  was  in  the 
very  early  spring;  the  snow  had  gone  but  April's 
green  brush  had  not  yet  painted  out  the  winter's 
brown. 

We  had  nowhere  particular  to  go  and  nothing 
particular  to  see.  We  just  jogged  our  way 
through  deep-rutted  mud  roads  from  one  old 
walled  village  to  another.  At  night  we  would 
stop  in  the  village  inn  and  after  our  supper  wan- 
der on  '' down-town"  and  into  the  grocery  store 
for  an  hour's  gossip. 

Dried  peppers  and  rows  of  onions  and  knick- 
knacks  hung  from  the  low  ceiling.  Usually  there 
was  a  counter  and  behind  it,  next  the  wall,  open 
bins  for  sugar  and  rice  and  ground  wheat  and 
spices.    Most  of  the  jmrchases  were  for  a  penny 

74 


YOUNG  CHINA 

or  twos'  worth  of  stuff — China  is  very  poor  and 
the  margin  of  existence  is  a  pathetically  narrow 
one.  The  store  was  the  village  club  and  all  the 
old  fellows  with  their  thick  skirts  and  padded 
short  jackets  wandered  on  down-town  just  as  they 
do  every\\''here  else  in  the  world. 

It  was  like  being  back  home.  The  loafer,  the 
joker,  the  alarmist,  the  skinflint  and  the  village 
drunkard,  were  all  taken  right  out  of  the  picture 
from  the  General  Store  in  the  little  old  home 
town.  You  could  pick  them  out  as  soon  as  they 
came  in. 

I  think  I  enjoyed  those  hours  sitting  around  on 
a  home-made  chair  propped  against  the  wall  talk- 
ing through  a  sjTnpathetic  interpreter  to  common 
China,  as  much  as  I  have  enjoyed  any  hours  in 
my  life.  We  talked  about  crops  and  they  told 
me  that  most  of  the  farmers  around  there — they 
all  live  in  the  villages  and  go  out  to  their  bits  of 
ground  to  work — owned  on  an  average  of  two 
acres  each  and  rented  an  acre  or  two  more  from 
old  Chang  Tong,  and  that  they  had  to  give  half 
they  raised  as  rent. 

Crops  had  been  poor  that  year,  they  went  on. 
Some  parts  of  China  had  suffered  from  famine 
and  thousands  had  died.  Coolies  somewhere 
about  were  always  dying,  but  that  couldn't  be 
helped. 

They  weren  't  worrying  much  about  the  Japan- 
ese out  here  in  those  \'illages;  all  they  wanted 

75 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

was  to  be  left  to  run  their  own  affairs  as  they  had 
been  doing  for  five  or  ten  thousand  years.  Some 
of  the  young  men  of  the  villages  attended  Peking 
schools  and  when  they  came  back  during  their  va- 
cations they  told  how  terrible  the  Japanese  were 
and  said  that  the  Chinese  must  not  buy  or  use 
anything  the  Japanese  made.  If  they  couldn't 
find  what  they  needed  in  Chinese  made  goods, 
then  they  should  buy  American  goods.  America 
was  good  to  them  in  a  hundred  ways,  they  said: 
America  gave  them  schools  and  universities  and 
doctors  and  hospitals  and  new  ideas  of  govern- 
ment and  new  national  ideals. 

It  was  the  West  but  particularly  America 
creeping  in  slowly  but  surely.  And  China  needs 
America.  That  was  the  one  great  discovery  I 
made  in  this  little  invasion  of  common  China — 
that  and  the  fact  that  these  were  ordinary  human 
beings  who  suffered  from  ordinary  ills  and 
dreamed  ordinary  dreams  and  wanted  to  get 
ahead  so  that  their  sons  and  their  families  could 
have  a  little  better  place  in  the  community. 

They  needed  our  high  standards  of  living  and 
our  squarer  dealing  in  the  treatment  of  women, 
and  a  little  of  the  brotherhood  of  all  men  that 
Christ  taught.  They  needed  to  be  shown  that 
the  scale  of  living  and  the  ethics  of  living  of  the 
best  of  America  would  make  them  happier  and 
better. 

They  needed  new  ideas  of  sanitation  and  health 

76 


YOUNG  CHINA 

and  education  and  modern  agricultural  methods. 
They  needed  complete  modernization  of  their 
practical  affairs. 

* 'What's  worrying  me,"  Jimmy  Hunter  said 
one  morning  as  we  passed  a  dozen  *' razor-backs " 
that  were  half  head  and  half  legs,  **is  how  I  can 
improve  the  swine  in  this  part  of  the  country. 
These  pigs  are  nothing  but  bone  and  bristle — 
what  they  need  is  some  good  American  stock 
crossed  with  theirs." 

It  was  the  new  tj^pe  of  American  missionary  in 
China  talking.  There's  a  saying  over  here  now 
that  it's  harder  to  be  sent  to  China  as  a  mission- 
ary than  to  get  into  the  United  States  Consular 
Service.  I  don't  vouch  for  that  but  I  do  vouch 
for  the  statement  that  the  new  missionary  is  not 
worrying  so  much  about  propagating  religion  as 
he  is  about  disseminating  ideas  of  clean  living  and 
sanitation  and  independence  and  patriotism 
among  young  Chinese. 

No  foreign  influence  so  far  has  more  than 
scratched  China.  The  country  is  so  large  and  so 
old  and  its  superstitions  are  so  ancient  and  its 
customs  so  deep  rooted  that  for  China  to  change 
would  be  almost  like  Nature  altering  her  features. 
In  the  home  life  the  man  is  still  the  one  master 
and  lord.  The  woman's  place  is  distinctly  a  sec- 
ondary one.  Her  great  task  is  to  bear  male  chil- 
dren who  will  worship  the  memory  of  their  father. 
If  a  woman  fails  to  bear  children  then  the  master 

77 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

can  either  get  himself  Wife  No.  2  or  divorce  No. 
1,  and  marry  again.  And  marriages,  incidentally, 
are  always  performed  in  the  home  of  the  bride- 
groom ; — again  the  men  show  their  superior  place. 
Very,  very  slowly  some  of  these  customs  are 
changing — and  the  American  missionaries  have 
had  more  to  do  with  these  changes  than  all  the 
other  foreign  influences  in  China  put  together. 
Civilizations  that  have  existed  for  hundreds  and 
thousands  of  years  necessarily  have  developed 
tremendous  powers  of  resistance,  and  they  resist 
good  innovations  the  same  as  evil  ones.  This 
old  civilization  of  China,  I  repeat,  has  hardly 
been  scratched. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  Province  of  Shantung 
that  the  Germans  had  marked  off  for  their  own 
until  the  Japanese  took  it  as  their  share  of  the 
spoils  of  the  War.  There  are  thirty  million 
Chinese  in  this  one  province  and  I  suppose  alto- 
gether possibly  three  thousand  Japanese.  A 
German-built  railroad  runs  from  the  German- 
built  city  of  Tsingtau  on  the  coast,  back  to  Tsi- 
nanfu,  the  capital.  It  is  a  scratch  on  the  surface 
of  Shantung. 

The  thirty  million  go  peacefully  ahead,  planting 
their  wheat  and  weaving  their  hair  nets.  To  the 
millions  of  farmers  in  their  thousands  of  hidden 
villages  it  doesn  't  matter  a  great  deal  whether  the 
Germans,  the  Japanese  or  Fiji  Islanders  own  and 
operate  that  scratch  of  steel  across  Shantung. 

78 


YOUNG  CHINA 

The  days  I  was  there  the  anti-Japanese  boycott 
was  booming  and  China  was  not  using  the  rail- 
road. Merchants  were  having  their  goods 
shipped  by  the  wheel-barrow  route  instead  of  by 
the  railroads.  Day  and  night  the  road  paralleling 
the  railway  track  echoed  with  the  ceaseless 
squeak  of  the  high,  single-wheeled  barrows  teach- 
ing Japan  that  it  was  better  business  to  treat 
China  fairly.  Coolies  walked  the  dusty  miles 
between  stations  rather  than  contribute  copper 
pennies  to  the  hated  Japanese.  These  were  the 
coolies  of  the  cities, — those  of  the  country  hardly 
knew  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  railroad. 

The  very  oppression  and  domination  by  Japan, 
it  seemed  to  me,  were  doing  something  that  noth- 
ing else  could  do, — they  were  tending  to  awaken 
China  to  the  necessity  of  unity  and  patriotism  and 
modernization.  The  boycott  was  shaking  China 
from  her  lethargy. 

Even  these  sleepy,  lost  villages  were  beginning 
to  feel  it  a  little.  It  was  getting  into  the  army, 
too. 

I  smile  when  I  think  about  this  wonderful  army 
of  China.  Chinese  soldiers  will  give  you  a  laugh 
twenty-four  hours  a  day — there  are  one  million 
three  hundred  thousand  of  them  and  that's  one 
million  three  hundred  thousand  laughs. 

Troops,  according  to  China,  are  for  stage  pur- 
poses and  not  for  real  fighting.  Judged  by  the 
number  of  soldiers  under  arms,  China  this  minute 

79 


THE  RISINa  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

is  one  of  the  greatest  military  nations  in  the 
world — but  she  isn't  to  be  taken  seriously,  except 
locally.  And  locally  she  is  anything  but  the  paci- 
fist country  she's  cracked  up  to  be.  Her  govern- 
ment is  a  purely  militaristic  one ;  her  armies  cost 
her  sixty-five  per  cent,  of  her  total  income. 
That's  double  what  she  spends  for  all  other  state 
purposes  put  together — except  interest  on  the 
national  debt — and  six  times  what  the  whole  coun- 
try spends  on  public  education.  Incidentally  she 
is  spending  at  present  more  than  twice  as  much 
on  her  soldiers  as  she  spent  in  the  fine  old  mili- 
taristic days  of  the  Manchu  dynasty,  twelve  or 
thirteen  years  ago. 

These  humorous,  padded  soldiers,  who  declare 
armistice  for  tea,  have  been  one  of  the  great 
curses  of  China.  To  appreciate  what  they've 
meant  we  must  go  back  to  the  formation  of  the 
republic.  The  government  then  under  the  Man- 
chus  was  strongly  centralized  as  regards  military 
power.  With  the  revolution  Yuan  Shi-Kai,  the 
first  regular  president,  dreaming  of  another  mon- 
archical dynasty,  set  about  to  build  up  a  great 
personal  national  army.  For  this  purpose  he 
used  up  a  reorganization  loan  and  shouldered  on 
the  Peking  Government  a  big  army. 

With  his  death  the  army  broke  up  into  many 
parts  and  the  day  of  the  powerful  military  gov- 
ernor, who  was  a  law  unto  himself,  came.  The 
Peking  Government  had  no  great  army  of  its  own 

80 


YOUNG  CHINA 

and  lived  only  through  the  shifting  balance  of 
military  power  that  kept  its  officials  in  office. 
This  was  the  condition  when  America  entered  the 
World  War. 

Most  of  the  Chinese  at  this  time  were  fairly 
apathetic  about  the  war.  They  were  not  violently 
pro-anything.  During  the  spring  and  summer  of 
1917  when  it  seemed  quite  reasonable  that  the 
Germans  might  win  the  war  or  at  least  tie  it, 
there  were  a  good  many  Chinese  who  were  very 
friendly  toward  the  Germans.  They  reasoned 
that  the  Germans  might  vdn  and  if  they  did  it 
was  not  at  all  improbable  that  Japan  might  make 
a  new  alliance  with  Germany  and  Russia.  China 
could  not  afford  to  be  against  any  such  combina- 
tion. 

Then  many  of  the  Chinese  felt  that  if  China 
entered  the  war  it  would  be  to  help  England — 
and  they  were  strongly  anti-English.  Besides, 
the  German  merchant  and  commercial  man  here 
had  treated  the  Chinese  carefully  and  as  an  equal 
and  many  Chinese  liked  them  personally. 

America  brought  China  into  the  war.  Liberal 
China,  which  has  always  been  friendly  mth 
America,  wanted  to  be  with  us — and  the  militar- 
ists saw  a  chance  to  get  the  great  national  army 
they  had  dreamed  of.  So  China  was  swung  into 
the  war  on  August  14,  1917.  Before  this  Japan 
had  bought  a  hold  on  the  military  politicians  of 
Peking  and  the  then  premier,  Marshal  Tuan  Chi- 

81 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Jui,  leader  of  the  Anfu-Club,  had  dissolved  Par- 
liament, opening  afresh  the  old  struggle  between 
the  North  and  the  South, 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  China,  officially 
in  the  war,  borrowed  money  and  raised  a  special 
national  army  of  some  four  hundred  thousand. 
The  patriotic  men  of  the  government  wanted  this 
army  sent  to  France  so  that  it  would  give  China 
an  advantageous  position  at  the  peace  table;  but 
the  ambitious  military  politicians  wanted  the 
army  only  to  hold  their  own  power.  America 
refused  to  lend  them  money  to  build  up  this  fight- 
ing force,  so  they  turned  to  Japan.  In  the  forty- 
eight  months  preceding  September,  1918,  fifty- 
one  loans,  totaling  three  hundred  million  dollars, 
were  made  by  Japan. 

Most  of  this  money  went  for  military  pur- 
poses and  resulted  in  the  formation  of  a  great 
northern  army  that  has  been  more  or  less  under 
the  direct  influence  of  Japanese  military  officers. 
This  army  kept  the  corrupt  and  inefficient  Pek- 
ing officials  in  power  and  drew  tighter  the  stran- 
glehold that  Japan  had  on  the  Chinese  Govern- 
ment. It  kept  the  four  hundred  million  people 
of  China  under  the  heel  of  the  Peking  militarists 
and  the  different  military  governors,  and  in  turn 
held  these  military  politicians  under  the  spell  of 
Japan. 

China  to-day  is  really  less  of  a  republic  than 
Japan  is — and  Japan  to-day  is  hardly  more  than 

82 


YOUNG  CHINA 

an  echo  of  the  Germany  of  Bismarck.  The  gov- 
ernment instead  of  being  a  responsible  democracy 
is  nothing  short  of  a  military  autocracy — or 
rather  a  collection  of  military  autocracies.  It  is 
uncontrollably  decentralized  to  the  extent  that 
the  real  power  rests  in  some  twenty  tu-cliuns  or 
military  governors  of  provinces,  each  of  whom 
has  his  owti  anny  and  belongs  to  some  clique  of 
fellow  tu-chuns  that  controls  combinations  of  dif- 
ferent tu-chuns.  And  they  have  one  million  three 
hundred  thousand  of  these  non-fighting  soldiers 
of  theirs,  drawing  six  silver  dollars  a  month, 
which  they  mostly  don 't  get,  and  living  off  the  fat 
and  lean  of  the  land  by  streaks. 

Most  of  all  this  is  a  pessimistic  picture  for  a 
nation  that  some  day  is  going  to  take  its  rightful 
place  among  the  great  nations  of  to-morrow.  But 
China  is  going  to  win  because  to-day  China  is 
reeking  with  revolutions:  every  kind  that  the 
world  has  ever  known,  except  a  fighting  revolu- 
tion, is  going  on  there  this  very  second.  As  fast 
as  she  can  she  is  tearing  down  the  great  walls  of 
tradition  and  ignorance  and  stupidity  and  letting 
in  the  winds  of  truth  and  hope  and  justice  from 
the  "West.  And  just  as  fast  as  she  can  she  is  un- 
loosening the  foot-binding  that  has  bound  her  to 
an  outworn  past  with  all  its  stupid  cruelties. 

In  the  spring  of  1920,  the  first  five  girl  students 
were  permitted  to  enroll  in  the  Government  Uni- 

83 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

versity  in  Peking.  It  is  not  an  item  that  would 
"make"  the  front  page  of  very  many  American 
dailies,  but  it  is  one  of  far  more  real  significance 
that  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  first-page 
stories.  It  was  a  harbinger  of  the  emancipation 
of  Chinese  women.  Here  were  Chinese  girls 
fighting  their  way  before  the  public  gaze  as  the 
full  equals  of  men. 

Woman's  place  around  the  home  is  still  a 
submerged  one,  but  the  woman's  revolution  is  not 
going  to  be  denied.  Our  mission  teachers  and 
preachers  have  a  tremendous  amount  to  do  with 
this  and  in  thousands  of  homes  scattered  about 
great  China  the  emancipation  of  the  women  is  as 
real  a  thing  as  the  physical  unbinding  of  their 
tortured  feet.  It  is  a  part  of  the  great  moral 
revolution  that  is  sweeping  over  the  country  and 
mil  change  all  the  stupid,  cruel  customs  just  as 
the  commercial  revolution  is  changing  old  style 
business  methods  of  China  and  unloosening  a 
great  tide  of  industrial  awakening. 

But  the  greatest  revolution  of  them  all  is  the 
one  that  centers  around  the  student  movement. 
Here  is  the  heart  and  head  and  hope  of  Young 
China.  It  would  take  a  book  to  tell  about  this 
great  movement  and  the  tremendous  influence  it 
has  already  had  on  the  life  and  future  of  these 
gentle,  smiling,  backward  four  hmidred  millions. 

It  is  the  biggest  thing  that  has  ever  happened 
to  China.    No  concrete  movement  and  no  single 

84 


YOUNG  CHINA 

action  has  ever  had  the  instantaneous  effect  that 
this  great  student  mass  movement  has  had.  This 
can  be  partly  accounted  for  on  account  of  the 
unique  position  that  the  student  occupies  and  has 
always  occupied  in  the  consideration  of  common 
China.  For  thousands  of  years  she  has  picked 
all  her  officials  by  competitive  examination  from 
among  her  students  and  this  quite  naturally  has 
placed  the  student  body  in  a  singular  place  of  re- 
spect and  admiration  by  the  great  unlettered 
masses. 

To  get  the  full  story  of  the  Chinese  student 
movement  we  must  go  back  to  May  3,  1919.  This 
was  in  the  days  of  the  Paris  Peace  Conference, 
when  Doctor  C.  T.  Wang  and  Wellington  Koo  of 
the  Chinese  delegation  were  putting  up  their 
brave  and  losing  fight  against  the  rape  of  Shan- 
tung by  the  Japanese. 

There  was  a  little  too  much  publicity  about  the 
whole  Shantung  proposition  to  suit  the  Japanese 
delegation  so  cables  were  passed  and  orders 
given,  and  shortly  the  Japanese  minister  at  Pe- 
king brought  pressure  to  bear  on  the  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment for  the  recall  of  Wang  and  Koo  from  the 
Paris  delegation. 

The  word  of  this  protest  spread  like  mldfire 
through  the  mysterious  underground  news  chan- 
nels that  are  everywhere  in  the  East,  and  on  the 
fourth  day  of  May  a  great  mass  meeting  of  the 
students  of  Peking  was  called  openly  to  protest 

85 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

against  this  interference.  Several  thousand  stu- 
dents gathered  that  night  and  the  tiny  flame  of 
patriotism  suddenly  blazed  forth  in  a  great  fire 
of  spirit  that  swept  all  over  China. 

Instantly  it  was  out  of  hand:  before  that  first 
night  was  over  the  infuriated  students  attacked 
and  tore  down  the  home  of  Tsao  Ju-ling,  Chinese 
Minister  of  Finance  and  Communications,  and 
credited  with  being  the  guiding  spirit  and  paid 
agent  of  Japan's  intrigues  in  Peking,  and  at  the 
same  time  they  assaulted  Chang  Chung  Hsiang, 
Chinese  Minister  to  Japan,  and  sent  him  to  the 
hospital  with  severe  injuries. 

That  night  thirty-two  students  were  arrested 
and  thrown  into  jail.  The  next  day  a  general 
strike  of  the  students  was  ordered:  they  would 
refrain  from  attending  classes  until  these  national 
wrongs  were  righted. 

This  same  day  the  president  of  China  dismissed 
the  chancellor  of  the  University  and  issued  a 
mandate  forbidding  student  meetings.  On  May 
20th  the  Peking  Students'  Union  was  formally 
organized  and  on  May  24th,  a  general  strike  of 
all  the  students  in  the  city  was  ordered. 

The  campaign  was  well  thought  out  and  care- 
fully executed.  On  June  3rd  the  ten  thousand 
student  agitators  filtered  into  every  corner  of 
Peking  and  preached  boycott  and  revolution.  By 
nightfall  three  thousand  were  arrested  and  the 
halls  of  Peking  University  turned  into  a  prison. 

S6 


YOUNG  CHINA 

The  following  day  the  students  who  were  still 
free  were  again  sent  out  to  spread  the  truth  about 
the  Peking  Government  and  explain  how  China 
was  being  sold  out  to  the  Japanese.  That  day 
thousands  more  were  arrested. 

So  far  the  great  movement  was  limited  to  Pe- 
king. After  this  second  day  of  general  student 
arrest,  however,  Shanghai  came  to  the  rescue. 
Aroused  by  the  students  there,  the  merchants 
and  common  people  of  the  international  settle- 
ment and  the  native  city  went  on  a  ten-day  strike 
of  protest,  and  not  a  wheel  turned.  Even  the  beg- 
gars struck. 

The  government  turned  pale,  and,  shaking  mth 
fear,  weakened  before  this  tremendous  demand  of 
public  opinion. 

The  famous  Twenty-one  Demands  that  Japan 
forced  China  to  agree  to  in  1915,  coupled  with  all 
the  aggressions  of  Japan  before  and  after, 
brought  on  the  boycott  that  these  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  students  so  gallantly  championed 
and  propagandized.  Millions  of  Chinese  villagers 
and  coolies  who  knew  Japan  only  as  a  name  were 
swung  into  the  most  intense,  bitter  hate  against 
her.  In  Shantung,  as  I  have  already  described, 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  Chinese  walked  or  rode 
on  squeaky  high-wheeled  barrows,  rather  than 
pay  one  cent  of  tariff  to  the  railroad  that  Japan 
had  grabbed.  Yangtsi  Eiver  steamers  flying 
Japanese  flags  plied  up  and  do^vn  the  river  empty 

87 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

^n  five  months  during  the  latter  part  of  1919, 
their  average  cargo  dropped  from  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty-four  tons  a  trip  to  less  than  five 
tons,  and  they  carried  practically  no  passengers 
at  all.  During  the  year  that  the  boycott  was 
pushed  Japan's  loss  was  fully  forty  per  cent,  of 
her  gross  trade  mth  China  and  in  certain  sec- 
tions the  decrease  was  probably  ninety  per  cent. 

The  students  had  furnished  the  match  for  all 
of  this,  but  it  was  the  small  merchants  of  China 
who  supplied  the  fuel  that  kept  the  boycott  afire. 
These  merchants  with  money  and  business  to  lose 
proved  that  China  did  have  a  certain  patriotism 
and  a  tremendous  weapon  of  resistance.  They 
showed  to  the  world  that  there  are  other  effec- 
tive weapons  of  warfare  besides  poison  gas  and 
machine-guns. 

Slowly  the  fire  of  the  boycott  has  died  down, 
but  it  is  still  glowing  and  at  any  moment  may 
flare  up  again.  And  it  has  taught  tremendous 
lessons  to  Japan.  It  has  proved  that  an  un- 
friendly market  is  a  poor  market — and  this 
knowledge  has  had  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  bat- 
tle now  going  on  in  Japan  between  the  military 
and  the  commercial  interests. 

Almost  a  year  to  a  day  after  the  birth  of  the 
great  student  movement  the  students  again  at- 
tempted a  nation-wide  protesting  strike.  This 
attempt  failed  to  gain  all  its  ends,  but  it  is  a  fail- 
ure that  has  no  particular  significance  because 

88 


YOUNG  CHINA 

the  student  movement  is  going  forward  with  ever- 
increasing  momentum. 

Slowly  the  revolt  is  broadening  and  outgrowing 
its  original  conception  of  a  flaming  political  pro- 
test against  the  stupid  unpatriotic  actions  of 
Peking  officials  in  their  dealings  with  aggressive 
Japan.  To-day  it  is  dreaming  of  the  reforaiation 
of  China — of  breaking  down  the  old  walls  of  ignor- 
ance and  poverty  and  traditions  that  hide  China 
from  the  modern  world.  It  is  dreaming  of  educat- 
ing China's  four  hundred  million  common  people 
and  making  them  responsible  citizens  with  new 
codes  of  living. 

The  student  leaders  are  still  willing  to  carry 
on  their  fight  against  the  inefficient,  unpatriotic 
Government  of  Peking  and  against  Japan  with 
the  boycott  or  any  other  weapon  possible,  but  it 
is  the  broader  vision  of  their  great  task  that  is 
inspiring  them  at  present.  This  vision  divides 
itself  into  two  channels :  one  of  social  service  and 
the  other  of  a  cultural  reformation.  They  are 
both  new  to  China. 

In  the  line  of  social  service  these  student  or- 
ganizations are  doing  wonderful  things.  They 
have  established  scores  of  free  night  primary 
schools  for  poor  children  and  factory  workers  and 
they  are  giving  their  own  precious  time  as  teach- 
ers. They  are  going  into  the  villages  and  cities 
during  their  vacations  and  hours  off  and  preach- 
ing ideas  of  sanitation  and  health  and  right  liv- 

89 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

ing.  They  are  actually,  physically  reaching  down 
and  pulling  China  out  of  the  past. 

In  their  dream  of  cultural  reformation  they 
vision  a  breaking  of  all  the  old  traditions  and  cus- 
toms that  bind  China  to  so  much  that  is  unworthy 
in  her  old  civilization.  The  ''literary  revolution" 
is  a  big  part  of  this.  Started  before  the  present 
student  movement  in  an  attempt  to  make  the 
spoken  language  the  written  language  in  place  of 
the  old  difficult  and  scholarly  literary  language, 
the  literary  revolt  has  been  given  force  by  the 
students.  To-day  more  than  three  hundred  little 
student  publications  are  being  printed  in  the  style 
of  the  spoken  language — a  year  ago  there  were 
only  three  liberal  papers.  The  work  is  going 
ahead  to  do  away  with  the  thousands  of  Chinese 
characters  and  substitute  a  phonetic  alphabet  of 
thirty-nine  letters  as  against  our  owai  of  twenty- 
six. 

All  in  all  it  is  a  wholly  new  China  for  which 
these  students  are  making  sacrifices;  a  China 
where  public  opinion  will  have  a  place ;  a  China  of 
good  citizens  with  a  good  government;  a  China 
of  unbound  feet  and  emancipated  women;  a 
China  of  revolutions ;  and  a  China  that  some  day 
will  have  no  fear  of  Japan  and  will  be  able  to  take 
her  place  in  the  family  of  nations  as  the  great 
peace  lover  of  the  world. 

The  West  must  recognize  all  this  and  change 
her  whole  view-point  regarding  China.    England 

90 


YOUNG  CHINA 

and  France  and  Eussia  and  Germany  and  Italy 
must  completely  revise  all  their  ideas  about  this 
great  land  of  the  East. 

For  a  hundred  years  Europe  has  bullied  and 
abused  China,  just  as  she  has  bullied  and  abused 
India,  just  as  she  has  bullied  and  abused  the  half- 
billion  other  black,  brown  and  yellow  men  of  the 
East  and  Near  East.  And  China,  like  the  rest  of 
the  dominated  races  of  the  world,  is  getting  tired 
of  it  all.  Only  America  has  treated  her  fairly. 
Following  the  Boxer  uprising  of  1900  America 
was  the  one  country  that  turned  back  to  China 
the  huge  indemnities  exacted.  (For  four  years 
the  foreign  diplomatic  ministers  in  Peking  com- 
pelled the  poor  bankrupt  country  to  pay  the  an- 
nual Boxer  indemnity  to  the  powerless  ex-Rus- 
sian legation,  which  is  a  hold-over  of  the  old 
Romanoff  days  and  represents  no  one. 

China  has  been  fought  over  and  quarreled  over 
and  split  up  into  spheres  of  influence  for  a  full 
century.  Fortunately  for  the  West,  she  is  at  this 
moment  more  anti-Japanese  than  she  is  anti-any- 
thing  else.  But  the  West  must  not  forget  that  the 
Chinese  are  yellow  men  and  have  a  great  bond 
of  color  to  link  them  with  the  yellow  men  of 
Japan. 

They  know  the  history  of  the  white  invasion  of 
China,  they  know  of  the  British  Opium  War,  and 
the  grab  for  ports  and  the  fights  for  concessions 
and  the  haggling  and  bullying  and  brow-beating 

91 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

by  European  diplomats  and  business  concerns. 
They  are  tired  of  it. 

China  is  at  the  cross-roads,  and  America  is 
the  one  great  nation  that  she  trusts  and  loves. 
We  can  show  her  the  right  road, — the  trail  that 
will  help  her  develop  herself,  help  her  teach  her- 
self, help  her  protect  herself,  and  yet  keep  her 
the  peace-loving,  gentle,  kindly,  smiling  country 
that  she  is. 


CHAPTER  IV 

KAGAWA  OP  KOBE THE  STOBY  OF  THE  NEW  JAPAN 

The  STORY  of  the  unrest  of  Japan  differs  fun- 
damentally from  that  of  India  and  Egypt  because 
here  in  Japan  a  most  violent  nationalism  is 
already  burning.  The  growing  restlessness  is 
expressed  not  against  outsiders  but  against  social 
conditions  and  the  government  itself. 

As  the  one  country  of  the  Old  World  that  has 
withstood  the  encroachments  of  the  white  man, 
Japan  for  more  than  a  decade  has  held  a  unique 
place.  Since  the  defeat  of  the  Russians  at  Port 
Arthur  in  1904  she  has  been  in  a  position  for  real 
eastern  leadership.  But  she  has  recklessly  squan- 
dered this  in  a  wild  debauch  of  ambitious  impe- 
rialism. 

To-day  the  millions  of  China  hate  and  fear 
Japan  infinitely  more  intensely  and  bitterly  than 
they  despise  the  western  nations.  The  seventeen 
million  of  Korea  look  upon  her  as  a  brutal  con- 
queror. The  millions  of  India  have  no  faith  in 
her  quality  of  leadership  and  scoff  at  her  shoddy 
tricks  of  trade:  at  the  Indian  National  Con- 
gress held  in  October,  1921,  a  motion  condemning 
Japan  for  her  treaty  association  with  England 

93 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

was  passed  by  a  large  majority.  And  Indian 
merchants,  deceived  by  cheap  Japanese  goods, 
have  turned  against  everything  that  is  Japanese. 

Japan's  own  ambitions — her  imperialism  and 
her  dreams  of  conquest — ^would  in  time  wreck 
themselves  against  the  overwhelming  numbers 
of  the  East,  but  there  is  something  that  keeps  this 
from  being  necessary — New  Japan  itself.  Kaga- 
wa  of  Kobe  represents  this  New  Japan — liberal, 
daring,  hopeful,  fine. 

Something  about  this  man  Kagawa  of  Kobe, 
makes  me  think  of  Mahatma  Gandhi.  Possibly  it 
is  because  both  are  thin,  emaciated,  almost  pitiful 
figures  kept  going  by  the  blazing  fire  of  their 
spirit. 

I  suppose  it  is  in  this  last — this  spiritual  fire 
— that  lies  the  strongest  resemblance.  I'm  sure 
their  hearts  beat  the  same  tune. 

In  India  they  call  Gandhi,  Saint  Gandhi — and 
I'm  certain  that  if  these  poor  submerged  out- 
casts of  Kobe 's  underworld  and  the  striving,  half 
educated  workers  of  the  great  shipyards  and  fac- 
tories could  make  Japanese  saints  they'd  turn 
their  Kagawa  into  one. 

I  first  heard  of  him  at  a  thrilling  labor  meet- 
ing in  Tokyo.  A  cordon  of  police  stretched  from 
the  street  to  the  entrance  and  once  inside  the 
assembly  hall  they  lined  the  walls  and  strung 
like  long  arms  down  the  aisles. 

Probably  five  hundred  men  were  at  this  labor 

94 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

meeting  and  certainly  no  less  than  seventy-five 
policemen — who  listened  open  mouthed  to  the 
speakers'  magic  plea  for  liberty  and  more  rice 
while  they  preserved  the  majesty  of  worn-out 
laws. 

A  liberal  sprinkling  of  blue-capped  students 
gave  a  tone  to  the  crowd.  For  the  most  part  the 
men  were  skilled  workmen  and  petty  clerks,  with 
groups  of  students,  but  here  and  there  you 
caught  sight  of  the  lettered  jacket  of  some  coolie 
— a  coolie  who  only  yesterday  was  a  serf  and 
to-day  is  fettered  to  a  submerged  class. 

A  young  boy  in  the  uniform  of  a  Tokyo  mail 
carrier  was  the  first  to  open  the  mouths  of  those 
undersized  cops:  ''I  work  long  hours  and  yet  I 
must  live  in  a  cold  unlighted  room,  and  I  am  hun- 
gry, and  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  men  who  work 
with  me  want  what  I  do — a  real  democracy  and 
real  freedom  and  real  living  wages."  And  the 
police,  thinking  of  their  own  half -filled  rice  bowls 
— the  average  wage  of  the  Japanese  policeman  is 
something  like  ten  dollars  a  month — forgot  their 
majestic  pose  and  became  but  striving  hungry 
humans. 

But  a  minute  later  when  a  square-jawed  coal 
miner  from  the  striking  districts  began  to  tell 
how  gendarmes  and  soldiers  were  beating  up  the 
miners  in  their  camps  a  police  captain  loaded 
down  with  a  half -ton  of  gold  braid  blew  a  whistle 
and  the  fight  was  on.    It  was  a  neat  battle  for  a 

95 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

few  moments  and  then  while  the  crowd  jeered, 
the  officers  carried  out  two  men  feet  first. 

So  it  went  for  an  hour.  Once  there  was  a  fairly 
general  fight.  That  time  I  stood  on  my  chair  and 
almost  cheered.  It  was  good  for  your  soul  just  to 
look  on.  The  miracle  had  happened — the  Japan- 
ese worm  was  turning. 

After  this  last  ''battle  royal"  I  hummed  my 
way  out  of  the  building.  I  was  too  happy  to  want 
to  stay  and  face  the  prospect  of  having  it  all 
spoiled.  Young  Japan,  it  was  clear  now,  was 
coming  strong;  let  common  ordinary  folk  really 
start  fighting  and  dying  for  what  they  want  and 
nothing  can  stop  them.  These  conomon  Japanese 
folk  were  no  longer  completely  crushed  by  the 
threat  of  the  emperor's  gendarmes.  They  had 
crawled  out  from  under  the  iron  heels. 

This  night  a  young  student  who  was  earning 
his  way  through  college  by  working  half  time  as 
a  translator  in  one  of  the  newspaper  offices  acted 
as  my  interpreter.  He  was  eighteen  and  a  proud 
and  almost  haughty  Socialist — and  chuck  full  of 
fight.  He  told  me  that  he  had  turned  naturally 
to  Socialism  on  account  of  the  injustices  and 
social  wrongs  of  Old  Japan. 

"Are  there  many  Socialists  among  the  stU' 
dents?"  I  asked. 

''Not  many  are  Socialists,  but  most  of  the  stu- 
dents are  against  the  present  government,"  he 
answered.     "They  all  want  Japan  to  become  a 

96 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

free  democratic  country.  We  are  sick  and  tired 
of  being  ruled  by  the  military  party.  And  we 
are  against  Japan's  imperialistic  ambitions." 

"How  about  Japan's  actions  in  China  and  Si- 
beria?" 

"We  are  air  for  the  Chinese  students,  and  our 
student  organizations  are  in  close  touch  with 
theirs.  Of  course  we  have  always  been  against 
our  government's  policy  in  Siberia.  We  are 
fighting  every  move  of  our  militarists.  We  are 
going  to  fight  them  until  either  they  are  killed  or 
we  are  killed." 

I  was  glad  to  get  him  away  from  that  strike 
meeting  at  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  My  boy  Socialist  was 
too  full  of  fight  to  be  loose  where  the  smoke  of 
battle  was  so  heavy  and  the  fighting  was  so  good. 
Then,  too,  he  wanted  to  talk  to  me  about  his 
Young  Japan — about  how  it  had  and  would  fight 
against  the  Old  Japan.  He  said  that  Kobe  and 
Osaka,  where  they  had  had  the  great  rice  riots 
and  the  big  steel  strikes,  were  the  places  to  study 
New  Japan — and  that  Kagawa  of  Kobe  was  the 
man  to  tell  me  about  it.  So  I  went  and  sat  at  the 
feet  of  this  "Saint  of  New  Japan." 

Around  Kobe  they  call  him  the  Sensei  of 
Shinkawa — the  teacher  of  the  slums  of  Shinkawa. 
His  real  name  is  Toyakiko  Kagawa  and  since  his 
graduation  from  Princeton,  a  few  years  ago,  he 
has  been  giving  his  tune  to  bringing  a  little  touch 
of  hope  to  the  outcasts  of  Kobe  and  a  little  light 

97 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

to  the  bewildered  laborers  of  the  great  Osaka  and 
Kobe  mills.  He  had  secretly  formed  the  Federa- 
tion of  Labor  of  Western  Japan,  and  it  was  his 
genius  that  had  dreamed  the  idea  of  the  great 
<'Go  Slow"  strike. 

I  wish  you  could  see  these  slums  of  his;  tiny 
'crooked  alleys,  less  than  four  feet  mde,  banked 
on  both  sides  mth  narrow,  wooden  dog  kennels, 
six  by  eight  feet  square  and  probably  five  feet 
high.  Here  twenty  thousand  outcasts  live  like 
homeless  dogs ;  each  human  kennel  crowded  with 
squalling,  quarreling  creatures  of  filth  and  ver- 
min, rotting  with  crime  and  tuberculosis  and 
disease.  Outcasts  of  all  kinds — whites,  blacks, 
Eurasians,  Chinese — dregs  of  an  old,  old  East. 
God !  what  a  sore  on  the  earth ! 

Crowding  the  doorways  and  filling  the  winding 
alley  paths  are  hundreds  of  poor  outcast  children 
in  filthy  rags,  whose  eyes  light  up  with  happiness 
when  they  see  Kagawa,  this  teacher  of  kindness, 
approach.  For  him  it  is  always  a  triumphal 
march ;  shrill  little  voices  herald  his  coming,  while 
thin,  hungry,  half -clad  little  bodies  scramble  to 
hold  his  hand  or  even  to  touch  his  kimono.  No 
Pied  Piper  ever  had  a  more  willing,  joyful  train. 

You  follow  him  \rith  real  tears  in  your  eyes — 
this  teacher  of  Shinkawa — wan  and  undersized, 
smiling  with  warm  brown  eyes,  preaching  God ; 
a  young  savior,  walking  among  outcasts,  mur- 
derers and  broken  lives  of  the  lower  depths, 
preaching  a  living,  breathing  Christianity. 

98 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

That  first  night  I  met  him  we  wandered  about 
these  forbidden  streets  for  an  hour,  and  then  he 
led  the  way  to  the  blackened  two-story  mission 
house  where  he  holds  his  little  school,  gives  out 
his  free  medicines,  and  brings  God  to  these  God- 
forgotten  people.  I  took  off  mj  shoes  at  the 
door,  and  in  my  stockinged  feet  walked  up  the 
stairs  and  into  the  matted  and  immaculate  study. 
For  hours  we  talked  of  "Dangerous  Thoughts," 
and  Kagawa  told  me  the  thrilling  story  of  how 
Young  Japan  is  opening  her  eyes,  and  seeing 
visions,  and  daring  real  democracy. 

"Dangerous  Thoughts,"  the  gover<nment  here 
calls  them.  America  would  call  them  "Inspiring 
Thoughts,"  "Glorious  Thoughts,"  "Winning 
Thoughts,"  because  they  are  all  about  the  hope 
of  a  people  struggling  up  to  the  light.  And  that 's 
the  greatest  gripping  romance  in  the  world — not 
the  struggle  and  fight  and  dreams  of  individuals, 
but  of  millions  opening  their  eyes  for  the  first 
time,  stretching  themselves  and  realizing  the 
power  of  their  strength. 

It  has  been  some  time  since  the  famous  rice 
riots  broke  out  in  Kobe  and  spread  over  Japan, 
but  they  are  Avell  worth  reviewing  now  because 
they  prove  this  theory  that  the  common  people 
of  Japan  are  not  afraid  to  fight  against  the  Old 
Order  and  the  Things  That  Were — and  that  in- 
cludes imperialism  and  militarism  in  whatever 
disguise  they  may  wear. 

99 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

The  Great  War  brought  Japan  the  commercial 
chances  that  she  had  long  been  dreaming  of. 
Suddenly  like  the  swing  of  a  door  all  the  markets 
in  the  Far  East  were  magically  opened  to  her. 
England  and  Germany  and  France,  which  for 
years  had  controlled  the  business  of  the  Orient, 
were  overnight  removed  from  competition.  Alone 
with  America,  Japan  profited  from  the  disasters 
of  the  others'  war.  Her  shipping  interests  paid 
for  their  vessels  in  a  single  voyage;  cotton  mills 
declared  one  hundred  per  cent,  dividends  and 
gave  away  the  rest  of  their  profits  in  one  form  or 
another;  a  brand-new  crop  of  millionaires 
sprang  up  like  mushrooms  after  a  spring  rain — 
despised  narikins  who,  lying  back  in  pink  uphol- 
stered foreign  limousines,  honk-honked  the  com- 
mon millions  out  of  the  narrow  streets.  And  with 
every  new  narikin  rice  rose  another  notch. 

Then  one  September  day  a  great  mob  gathered 
as  if  brought  together  by  some  magic  magnet, 
and  in  the  evening,  moved  by  the  same  compel- 
ling force,  swept  along  to  the  office  of  the  big- 
gest rice  dealer  in  Kobe.  Suddenly  a  young 
man  with  chest  bared  to  his  waist  leaped  to  the 
stone  steps  and  waving  an  old  Samuria  sword, 
dramatically  led  the  crowd  of  angry  hungry  work- 
men to  destory  the  building.  That  was  a  real 
night  in  Japan.  For  forty-eight  hours  mobs 
roamed  the  streets  of  Kobe  raiding  rice  shops — 
while  the  police,  hungry,  too,  on  their  starvation 

100 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

salaries,  looked  on  vnth.  a  poor  imitation  of  pre- 
serving order. 

The  police  would  not  and  could  not  stop  those 
September  mobs  and  it  was  necessary  to  call  out 
the  soldiers.  The  soldiers  did  their  work,  but 
it  was  whispered  in  a  hundred  governmental  con- 
ferences that  the  police  were  not  always  to  be 
depended  on  in  hunger  riots  and  that  some  of  the 
soldiers  too  had  shown  little  enthusiasm  against 
the  mobs. 

The  government  learned  much  from  these  rice 
riots.  Before  those  mad  days  were  over  the  riots 
had  spread  to  tw^o  hundred  and  forty  towns  with 
a  total  damage  of  ten  million  dollars.  Something 
had  to  be  done  to  control  this  mid  rush  of  an- 
archy. Instead  of  attempting  to  dam  it  the  gov^ 
ernment  ^\isely  tried  to  direct  it  into  sane  chan- 
nels. They  "winked  at  the  formation  of  labor 
unions  as  the  only  safe  outlet  for  the  gromng 
unrest. 

Eleven  years  ago  a  group  of  Socialists  had 
thro'WTi  a  chill  over  governmental  circles  with  an 
attempted  radical  move,  but  that  was  years  be- 
fore and  easily  solved.  Twelve  of  the  leaders 
were  executed  after  a  secret  trial  and  another 
dozen  sentenced  to  life  imprisonment.  But  that 
was  long  before  the  word  Bolshevism  was  even 
heard  of.  Times  had  changed  and  to-day  they 
examine  this  word  mth  fear  and  trembling. 

Japan  did  not  gradually,  patiently  grow  into 

101 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

a  modern  industrial  system — it  was  thrust  upon 
her  full  bloomed.  Her  society  thirty  years 
ago  was  a  feudal  system,  and  nothing  could  have 
so  rapidly  disintegrated  this  system  as  the  mod- 
ern factory  idea.  Almost  overnight  it  trans- 
formed men  from  peasants  wading  ankle  deep  in 
the  muddy  waters  of  the  rice  paddies  to  me- 
chanics sweating  before  their  lathes.  It  created 
in  a  day  a  brand-new  wage  class,  drafted  from 
the  simple  peasants  and  fishermen.  In  1887  there 
were  only  one  hundred  thousand  factory  em- 
ployees in  Japan ;  thirty-four  years  later  the  num- 
ber ran  up  to  a  million  and  a  half. 

The  patriarchal  system  still  endured  even  in 
these  modern  factories.  The  workmen  were 
bound  to  their  masters  by  old-fashioned  ties  of 
loyalty  and  a  system  of  bonuses  that  were  gifts 
handed  down  from  above.  The  national  laws 
prohibited  the  formation  of  trade  unions,  and 
strike  leaders  could  be  and  were  throwai  into  jail 
and  heavily  sentenced. 

The  war  gave  a  tremendous  boom  to  all  Japan 's 
industries  and  with  this  boom  came  all  the  undi- 
gested social,  economic  problems  that  always  ac- 
company too  rapid  expansion.  Wages  rose  but 
the  cost  of  living  climbed  twice  as  fast. 

The  rice  riots  were  the  immediate  result.  The 
next  result  was  the  formation  of  several  near 
labor  unions.  For  some  time  there  had  existed 
a    very    conservative    union,    the    Yusiki    (The 

102 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

Friendly  Society  of  Japan)  under  the  intense 
leadership  of  Bunji  Suzuki,  but  this  was  too 
lukewarm  and  too  pacific  for  the  fighting  Kagawa 
of  Kobe.  Immediately  he  set  to  work  and  brought 
to  life  a  belligerent  organization  known  as  the 
Federation  of  Labor  for  West  Japan. 

In  a  few  weeks  he  had  five  thousand  members 
and  had  started  his  own  Laborer's  News — and  he 
succeeded  in  doing  it  mthout  being  arrested.  As 
a  consequence  every  liberal  labor  man  in  Japan 
blinked  his  eyes  and  hustled  right  out  to  estab- 
lish his  own  pet  union.  In  Tokyo  alone  twenty- 
eight  brand-new  organizations  were  formed, 
ranging  all  the  way  from  a  Japanese  I.  W.  W.  to 
plain  labor  parties. 

Now  and  then  a  strike  broke  out,  but,  poorly 
led  and  unorganized,  it  usually  collapsed.  If  it 
occurred  in  some  great  concern  it  would  probably 
include  only  one  or  two  departments  and  its  doom 
was  prepared  in  advance.  If  larger  and  better 
led,  its  leaders  were  most  probably  tossed  in  jail 
and  permitted  to  cool  off  in  damp  cells. 

Almost  a  year  to  a  day  after  the  thrilling  rice 
riots  it  was  discovered  that  most  of  the  sixteen 
thousand  workmen  in  the  great  Kawasaki  Dock- 
yards, in  Kobe,  where  dreadnaughts,  locomotives 
and  everything  to  do  with  steel  is  made,  were 
standing  in  front  of  their  lathes  and  work-benches 
with  folded  arms  or  merely  playing  at  work.  Su- 
perintendents and  managers  tore  their  hair,  but 

103 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

one  thousand  agitating  members  of  the  new  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  of  West  Japan,  scattered  about 
the  great  plant,  talked  ''Go  Slow" — and  after  two 
weeks  of  going  slowly  the  officials  called  in  a 
delegation  and  promised  them  what  they  wanted 
— an  eight-hour  day  and  an  increase  in  pay.  It 
was  the  strangest  sabotage  strike  in  history,  and 
the  strikers  won.  Not  a  man  quit  and  not  a  man 
threw  a  monkey-wrench  into  the  machinery.  They 
simply  slowed  up — and  they  won  an  eight-hour 
day  and  an  increase  in  pay  that  made  their  wages 
average  from  seventy-five  cents  to  two  dollars 
and  seventy-five  cents  per  day  for  skilled 
mechanics. 

A  slim  little  consumptive  led  this  great  strike — - 
an  almost  pathetic  figure  who  in  more  ways  than 
one,  resembles  the  simple,  saint-like  Gandhi  of 
India.  His  name  is  Kagawa  of  Kobe.  It  takes 
wise  and  brave  leaders  to  do  this  sort  of  thing 
— ^men  as  mse  and  brave  as  Kagawa.  And  it 
takes  courageous  workers  to  follow  such  leaders. 

That  was  the  start  of  the  great  Kobe  labor 
movement.  Within  a  year  after  this  "Go-Slow" 
strike  most  of  these  Kawasaki  workmen  were  or- 
ganized in  unions  of  one  kind  or  another. 

But  this  was  not  true  of  the  eleven  thousand 
workers  in  the  Mitsubishi  Shipyards.  Here  the 
management  had  been  able  to  root  out  all  agi- 
tators and  keep  their  plant  "clean"  of  organizers 

104 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

— ^less  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the  men  being  or- 
ganized in  June,  1921.  As  direct  result  of  lack 
of  a  fighting  organization,  hours,  wages  and 
working  conditions  were  much  worse  at  these 
yards  than  at  the  Kawasaki. 

On  June  28,  1921,  the  Kobe  Federation  of 
Labor  held  a  meeting  to  see  what  could  be  done 
to  establish  firmly  the  position  of  labor  in  Kobe — 
to  hold  what  had  been  gained  and  to  plan  for  fu- 
ture organizing. 

The  f  ollo^-ing  day  the  Electrical  Department  of 
the  Kawasaki  yards  presented  demands  to  the 
factory  management,  including  recognition  of  the 
unions  as  negotiating  bodies  in  wage  or  other 
disputes,  a  high  allowance  system  in  cases  of  dis- 
charge, and  the  establishment  of  a  factory  com- 
mittee system  of  work  committees  selected  by  the 
workmen. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  workers  of  a  branch 
at  the  Mitsubishi  presented  demands  for  the  right 
to  organize  unions,  the  recognition  of  such  unions 
as  negotiating  bodies,  an  increase  of  wages,  the 
introduction  of  an  eight-hour  day  and  a  *' dis- 
charge allowance"  system. 

After  parleys  lasting  a  week  the  sixteen  com- 
mitteemen from  the  Electrical  Department  of  the 
Kawasaki  yards  were  dismissed  with  liberal  "dis- 
charge allowances" — but  the  sixteen  refused  to 
be  fired.  There  were  fights  and  riots  at  the  yard- 
gates  that  resulted  in  a  general  decision  of  the 

105 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

men  to  quit  work.  Much  the  same  thing  hap- 
pened at  the  Mitsubishi  plant. 

On  the  following  day,  July  8th,  the  workers 
from  both  shipyards,  to  the  number  of  some 
twenty- five  thousand,  paraded  the  principal 
streets  of  Kobe.  The  next  day,  Sunday,  a  second 
and  even  larger  demonstration  took  place.  The 
procession  stretched  for  miles  and  miles,  a  great 
line  of  red  flags,  red  union  banners  and  white 
banners  inscribed  with  strike  slogans. 

The  next  day  the  workers  reported  to  the  plant 
in  the  Kawasaki  yards  but  there  was  no  work 
done.  The  company  directors  steadily  refused  to 
discuss  matters  with  the  workers  owing,  they 
claimed,  to  the  absence  of  the  president  of  the 
company  in  Europe. 

Things  apparently  were  at  a  draw — when  into 
the  consciousness  of  the  workers  was  planted  the 
idea  of  taking  over  control  of  the  shops.  It  was 
radical — it  was  pure  Russian!  And  it  proved 
that  Japan's  labor  leaders  were  in  close  touch 
with  the  reddest  red  thought  of  Europe. 

A  proclamation  was  passed  out  to  all  the  work- 
ers that  read  as  follows : 

''The  Kawasaki  Industrial  Committee  assumes 
control  of  the  operations  of  the  various  work- 
shops from  date.  We,  as  representatives  of  over 
17,000  workers  at  the  head  and  branch  factories 
of  the  Kawasaki  Shipbuilding  Yard,  presented  to 
the  management  of  the  company  demands  con- 

106 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

sisting  of  seven  counts,  including  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  factory  committee  system.  To  these 
demands  Messrs.  Nagatome  and  Yamamoto,  di- 
rectors of  the  company,  refused  to  give  a  satisfac- 
tory answer,  on  the  plea  of  the  absence  of  the 
president. 

**We  have  never  been  prompted  by  a  desire  to 
put  the  industry  of  Japan  in  jeopardy.  What  we 
desire  is  that  the  company  should  recognize  our 
personality  and  help  in  rendering  our  lives  less 
difficult.  If,  however,  we  continue  to  strike  as  a 
counter-measure  against  the  arrogant  and  insin- 
cere attitude  which  has  been  hitherto  assumed  by 
the  company,  it  "wdll  only  end  in  paralyzing  the 
industry  of  Japan  and  in  causing  social  unrest, 
and  therefore  we  propose  to  do  our  work  at  our 
respective  workshops,  ourselves  assuming  con- 
trol of  all  operations,  until  our  demands  are  ac- 
cepted. 

THE  METHODS  OF  CONTROL 

**1.  The  Industrial  Committee  shall  control 
all  the  business. 

''2.  All  the  clerks  and  other  employees  must 
attend  to  their  respective  duties  as  hitherto, 
under  the  direction  of  the  Industrial  Committee. 

''3.  The  company  shall  be  made  to  pay  wages 
to  the  workers  at  the  same  rates  as  hitherto. 

"4.  The  working  hours  shall  be  reduced  from 
the  present  eight  hours  to  six,  but  efforts  wall  be 
made  to  do  the  same  amount  of  work  during  this 
reduced  working  period.  When,  however,  the 
Industrial  Committee  considers  it  expedient,  this 
time  will  either  be  extended  or  further  reduced. 

107 


rCHE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

"5.  Those  who  act  in  a  manner  disturbing  the 
general  peace  of  the  various  workshops  and  im- 
pairing the  efficiency  shall  be  referred  to  the 
Disciplinary  Committee. ' ' 

For  several  days  workers  came  to  their  benches 
as  usual,  but  there  was  no  work  done  for  no  de- 
tails of  operation  were  formulated.  Then  on  the 
morning  of  the  fourteenth,  a  battalion  of  troops 
arrived  and  the  works  were  closed  and  a  ten-day 
lockout  declared.  Demonstrations  were  pro- 
hibited, but  there  were  great  gatherings  under 
the  guise  of  athletic  meetings  and  later  vast  con- 
claves at  religious  shrines. 

While  all  this  was  being  done  by  the  Kawasaki 
workers,  the  laborers  in  the  Mitsubishi  yards  were 
demonstrating  and  rioting,  eventually  suffering 
a  lockout.  For  two  weeks  the  strike  went  on  and 
finally,  July  29th,  while  visiting  shrines  en  masse 
the  paraders  turned  off  from  their  regular  line 
of  march,  moving  toward  the  Kawasaki  docks, 
where  a  bloody  riot  took  place.  One  man  was 
mortally  wounded  and  forty  or  fifty  others  se- 
riously hurt. 

This  affair  was  followed  by  wholesale  arrests 
and  some  three  hundred  strike  leaders  were  im- 
prisoned, including  Kagawa,  the  real  brains  and 
inspiration  of  the  whole  movement.  On  August 
8th,  after  refusing  all  attempts  at  mediation  the 
workers  returned  to  the  yards  making  no  terms 
whatever  with  their  employers. 

108 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

Their  strike  was  lost,  but  they  had  gone  far  in 
awakened  labor  consciousness.  No  longer  were 
they  centuries  behind  their  factory  brothers  in 
European  and  Russian  shops.  They  were  in  the 
vanguard  of  labor  radicalism.  And  this  in  bu- 
reaucratic, imperialistic  Japan — ancient  Japan. 

''Some  day  I  shall  be  assassinated,"  Kagawa 
told  me,  very  quietly,  and  without  fear.  *'In  my 
slums  here  there  are  seven  hundred  gamblers, 
who  belong  to  the  ancient  Gamblers'  Guild  of  Old 
Japan.  Hounded  and  abused  by  the  police  in  the 
past,  the  government  has  now  organized  these 
gamblers  into  a  recognized  fraternity,  humor- 
ously called  'The  Flower  of  the  Nation,'  with  the 
sole  purpose  of  using  them  to  combat  the  fight 
for  democracy.  "Working  now  mth  the  police, 
they  are  used  to  choke  down  unrest  and  check  the 
gromng  power  of  the  millions.  The  Old  Order  is 
desperate  in  Japan  to-day." 

It  is  desperate,  too — this  worn-out  old  order  of 
militarism  and  medievalism.  It  is  desperate  and 
therefore  dangerous.  Against  it  are  ranged  all 
that  are  fair  and  liberal  and  intelligent.  The  best 
of  the  commercial  interests  of  Japan  are  trying 
to  check  military  ambition  before  it  reaps  the  har- 
vest that  was  Germany's;  and  they  are  trying  to 
solve  the  problems  of  industrial  unrest  before 
they  break  forth  in  some  wild  rush  of  Bolshevism. 

All  Young  Japan  is  helping  these  liberal  ele- 
109 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

ments.  The  students  of  Japan  are  dreaming  of  a 
New  Japan — liberal — advanced,  clean.  They  are 
in  harmony  with  the  ideals  of  China's  great  stu- 
dent body. 

Japan  is  at  the  forks  of  the  road.  She  must 
choose  either  a  path  that  will  lead  to  internal  and 
external  peace  and  happiness  or  one  that  will  lead 
her  to  both  wars  and  revolution.  For  generations 
the  militarists  vnVa  their  great  colonial  ambitions 
have  been  at  the  wheel.  They  have  brought  Japan 
a  certain  success  and  a  certain  prosperity,  but  it 
has  all  been  built  on  moving  sands.  The  worms 
of  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  are  eating  at  the 
wooden  foundations.  The  millions  of  Common 
Japan  are  tired  of  their  job.  They  want  a  good 
living  and  fair  chance  in  the  world  and  an  equal 
voice  in  their  own  affairs.  Universal  suffrage 
may  not  come  this  year  or  the  next,  but  the  cries 
of  the  great  majorities  must  sooner  or  later  be 
heard.  No  longer  will  they  consent  to  remain 
inarticulate — they  learned  to  lisp  in  their  rice 
riots  and  steel  strikes  and  soon  they  will  talk. 

They  have  proved  that  there  is  no  wrath  like 
the  wrath  of  the  patient  man;  for  the  Oriental, 
slow  to  anger  and  disciplined  for  centuries  in 
obedience  and  respect  and  patience,  knows  no 
restraint  when  he  finally  does  break  loose.  This 
fundamental  psychological  fact  must  be  reckoned 
with  in  considering  what  revolution  would  mean 
to  an  eastern  country  like  Japan.    The  old  ideas 

110 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

of  feudalism,  carrying  with  them  eastern  obe- 
dience and  loyalty  and  submission,  are  deeply 
rooted,  but  some  sudden  cyclone  of  hate  or  hunger 
or  wild  Bolshevism  could  tear  them  up  in  a  night. 

The  winds  of  Bolshevism  that  are  blowing  more 
or  less  over  the  world  are  only  faint  whispering 
breezes,  but  as  the  storm  center  comes  eastward 
from  the  Urals  they  grow  stronger  and  stronger. 

The  millions  and  millions  of  Japan's  submerged 
stand  at  one  end  of  the  social  balance;  at  the 
other  end  stands  the  old  and  firmly  entrenched 
royalty  backed  by  a  ruling  military  class  and 
caste.  Up  to  now  they  never  squarely  faced  each 
other,  but  the  time  is  surely  coming  when  they 
^W11,  and  if  there  is  no  middle  ground  for  them  to 
meet  on  or  no  one  from  the  center  to  show  them 
the  way,  revolution  must  inevitably  result. 

The  best  and  finest  men  of  Japan  see  this  and 
they  are  desperately  trying  to  meet  the  situation 
by  taking  the  power  away  from  the  military  and 
gi\^ng  it  bit  by  bit  to  the  millions.  These  men 
are  gaining  every  day  in  strength  and  confidence. 
They  are  fighting  against  tremendous  odds  be- 
cause neither  side  sympathizes  with  them;  and  in 
fighting  the  military  they  are  battling  all  the  past 
traditions  of  Japan. 

There  is  little  question  but  that  democracy 
eventually  \\dll  come.  It  takes  a  great  faith  in 
the  spirit  of  the  new  world  to  sense  its  approach 
in  this  last  bulwark  of  unfair,  irresponsible  autoc- 

111 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

racy — the  emperor  here  does  actually  live  behind 
stone  walls  and  moats — but  it  will  come  and  it 
will  overturn  the  old  military  idea  and  the  flar- 
ing new  radicalism  as  well.  Democracy  will  play 
no  favorites  here  if  it  is  given  a  chance,  and  it  will 
stand  neither  for  autocratic  Russian  Bolshevism 
nor  autocratic  Japanese  militarism. 

Behind,  and  more  important  than  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  working  masses  of  Japan  and  the  very 
modest,  conservative  liberalism  of  a  few  officials, 
stands  the  real  hope  of  this  coming  democracy — 
Japan's  wonderful  student  body.  It  is  these 
thousands  of  young  men,  in  their  student  caps  and 
blue  capes,  who  are  the  real  lamp-bearers  of  New 
Japan.  They  are  not  the  petty  minded,  narrow 
gauged  men  that  their  fathers  were,  but  rather 
broad  visioned  and  liberal,  who  hold  firmly  the 
idea  of  leading  their  Japan  peacefully  to  her 
real  place  in  the  New  World. 

American  college  students,  absorbed  in  athletics 
and  junior  proms,  could  take  many  useful  lessons 
from  these  boys  of  Japan.  Seventy-five  per  cent, 
of  them  are  going  out  of  their  universities  thrilled 
with  the  prospect  of  helping  Japan  solve  fairly 
and  decently  these  great  social  and  international 
problems.  Many  of  their  professors  are  opening 
to  them  visions  of  self-sacrifice  and  public  ser- 
vice, and  giving  them  ideals  that  will  help  carry 
them  through  their  battles  with  the  Things  That 
Are. 

112 


KAGAWA  OF  KOBE 

In  one  of  the  student  clubs  at  tlie  Imperial  TThi- 
versity  in  Tokyo  there  is  a  single  group  of  twenty- 
five  young  men  who  have  pledged  themselves  to 
give  their  lives  to  the  bringing  of  democracy  to 
Japan.  Five  years  ago  they  would  have  gone  into 
the  army  or  the  navy,  but  now  they  are  enlisting 
in  the  ranks  of  democracy  to  fight  for  what  is 
right  and  fair  and  fine.  There  is  an  actual  short- 
age of  applicants  to  the  military  schools  and 
scores  of  young  officers  are  leaving  the  army  and 
other  scores  are  coming  from  service  in  Siberia 
with  the  knowledge  that  things  are  fundamentally 
wrong  at  home. 

The  hope  of  peace  in  the  Pacific  rests  with 
these  same  students  and  young  liberals — and  mth 
the  widening  vision  and  broadened  knowledge  of 
thousands  of  the  more  progressive  Japanese. 

One  of  the  great  things  accomplished  at  the 
Washington  Conference  was  a  removing  of  the 
colored  spectacles  of  fear  and  distortion  that  large 
numbers  of  Japanese  had  been  wearing.  As  long 
as  the  professional  Japanese  militarists  could 
point  to  the  growing  menace  of  the  American 
Navy  he  could  hold  through  fear  the  upper  hand 
in  government  affairs.  But  no  longer  is  the 
American  Navy  a  potential  menace  to  the  western 
Pacific — and  so  at  present  the  shop-worn  shib- 
boleths of  the  Japanese  war  party  have  lost  their 
magic  with  the  common  millions. 

It  will  be  a  long  battle  in  Japan — this  fight  to 
113 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

gain  a  liberal  democracy.  But  it  is  coining,  just 
as  the  other  great  liberal  movements  of  the  world 
that  have  to  do  mth  man's  emancipation  and 
political  liberty,  are  coming. 

Kagawa  of  Kobe  will  pass  on,  but  there  will  be 
other  young  and  brave  leaders  to  snatch  up  the 
torch  and  carry  it  forward.  And  some  day  this 
torch  of  New  Nippon  will  help  light  the  world. 


CHAPTER  V 

STRUGGLING   KOREA 

Korea,  like  India  and  the  Philippines,  is 
another  example  of  the  world  tides  of  unrest 
bringing  to  strange  shores  a  determination  for 
nationalism. 

By  chance  it  is  expressed  here  not  against  white 
conquerors  but  against  yellow  conquerors — con- 
querors worshipping  the  same  gods  and  writing 
the  same  language  and  living  under  the  same  cul- 
ture and  civilization.  But  it  is  the  same  great 
battle — the  same  revolt — and  the  same  awaken- 
ing. 

Four  years  of  fighting  and  suffering  for  inde- 
pendence have  made  a  new  people  of  the  Koreans. 
They  are  nothing  short  of  a  transformed  race, 
finally  awakened  from  the  lethargy  that  has 
chained  them  for  countless  generations. 

There  are  few  stories  in  the  world  more 
dramatic  and  thrilling  than  this  story  of  the  re- 
birth of  Korea.  It  is  the  actual  coming  to  life  of 
a  nation  that  had  died  and  passed  on. 

Korea  was  gone  forever,  and  even  her  warmest 
friends  and  sympathizers  had  not  one  ray  of  hope 
for  her.    She  was  not  only  crushed  to  death  under 

115 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

an  iron  heel  but  the  spark  that  makes  nations  rise 
up,  apparently  had  been  put  out  forever.  Other 
nations  that  have  been  reborn,  like  Poland,  Fin- 
land, Czecho-Slovakia,  were  physically  crushed 
but  the  fire  of  revolt  and  the  secret  love  of  coun- 
try still  burned  brightly.  Four  years  ago  no  one 
dreamed  that  there  were  more  than  smoldering 
embers  of  nationalism  still  alive  in  Korea. 

Modem  Korea  had  always  been  misruled.  The 
court  had  degenerated  into  a  fat,  flabby,  weak 
affair  that  permitted  great  power  to  the  gov- 
ernors of  the  provinces  and  the  local  magistrates 
and  farmed  out  the  all  important  task  of  collect- 
ing the  taxes.  Graft  was  everywhere  and  the 
eternal  system  of  ** squeezing,"  which  has  worked 
such  harm  to  China,  was  rampant.  The  country 
had  no  backbone,  no  morale,  no  spiritual  reserve 
of  any  kind.  The  people  were  poor  and  kept  poor. 
The  army  had  countless  generals  but  few  sol- 
diers; the  navy  had  eighteen  admirals  but  no 
ships. 

In  1592  Japan  had  invaded  Korea  and  for  eight 
years  had  raided  and  ravaged  the  country. 
Korea  never  recovered  from  the  beating  she 
received — ^nor  did  she  ever  cease  to  hate  Japan. 
Since  then  she  has  been  merely  the  country  that 
has  been  fought  over  and  fought  for.  Until  a 
generation  ago  she  was  the  Hermit  Kingdom  that 
had  closed  her  doors  to  progress  and  civilization. 
When  they  were  forced  open  she  faced  an  ambi- 

116 


STRUGGLING  KOEEA 

tious  world  with  weak  faith,  weaker  spirit,  and 
absolute  lack  of  preparation. 

With  victory  in  the  Cliina-Japanese  War  and 
the  Russian-Japanese  War  it  was  inevitable  that 
Japan  should  take  Korea  as  the  final  spoils.  No 
one  any  longer  bothers  to  grow  violent  over  the 
way  Japan  broke  her  pledges  to  respect  the 
sovereignty  of  Korea — it's  an  established  fact  and 
one  of  a  rather  long  series  that  has  made  Japan's 
pledged  word  carry  little  weight  in  the  East. 

August  29,  1910,  Japan  formally  annexed 
Korea.  Previous  to  this  she  had  forced  the  abdi- 
cation of  the  old  emperor  in  favor  of  a  weak  and 
spineless  son.  In  1908  she  had  declared  her  pro- 
tectorate over  Korea,  and  two  years  later  she  had 
actually  and  completely  taken  her  into  the  fold. 

Japan  had  her  full  and  fair  chance  then. 
Unlike  these  days  of  her  ambitions  in  Manchuria 
and  Siberia  no  one  had  any  objection  to  her  ac- 
tions. With  absolutely  no  opposition  from  the 
outside,  and  none  worthy  of  mention  from  the 
inside,  she  took  over  a  country  and  its  seventeen 
million  people.  For  a  long  time  they  had  been 
an  unhappy  and  a  dissatisfied  people.  Their 
rulers  had  abused  them  and  misruled  them  and 
kept  them  in  ignorance  and  poverty.  What  they 
wanted  most  was  a  little  more  rice  and  better 
homes  and  a  little  less  ''squeezing"  and  a  few 
schools  for  their  children. 

Had  Japan  had  the  vision  and  the  real  interest 

117 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

in  Korea  she  could  easily  have  given  all  these 
things  and  more — and  won  Korea  both  for  the 
Koreans  and  the  Japanese.  But  she  dreamed  of 
Korea  only  for  the  Japanese. 

She  started  out  immediately  to  carry  this 
through.  She  backed  a  government-planned  de- 
veloping company  that  dreamed  of  colonizing 
Korea  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Japanese 
farmers.  This  company,  organized  in  1908,  had 
forced  the  old  Korean  Government  to  take  out 
three  million  dollars  in  stock  and  pay  for  it  in 
government  lands.  It  was  a  fair  start  for  a  young 
concern.  To-day  it  owns  one  twenty-sixth  of  all 
the  rice  lands  in  Korea  and  thousands  of  acres  of 
other  land.  The  country  is  full  of  tales  about  its 
petty  discriminations  against  Koreans;  I  can  not 
vouch  for  the  truth  of  these,  but  I  do  know  the 
Korean  fanners  distrust  and  hate  the  company. 

This  was  only  one  of  a  score  of  mistakes  that 
Japan  made  when  she  had  everything  in  her 
favor.  She  planted  down  a  police  and  gendarme 
system  that  was  both  cruel  and  unnecessary.  She 
honeycombed  the  country  with  spies  and  put  in 
thousands  of  soldiers.  She  filled  the  cities  and 
towns  vnth  Japanese  shop-keepers  and  small  busi- 
ness men.  She  interfered  with  old  religious  cus- 
toms. She  crushed  the  Korean  press  and  made 
free  speech  and  free  press  by^vords.  And  worst 
of  all,  she  attempted  to  stop  the  use  of  the  Korean 
language  in  the  government  schools. 

118 


STRUGGLING  KOREA 

For  nine  weary  years  the  Koreans  patiently 
bent  their  backs  and  bowed  their  heads.  For  cen- 
turies they  had  been  accustomed  to  abuse  from 
overlords — but  finally  the  worm  turaed. 

In  February,  1919,  the  old  emperor's  younger 
son,  who  had  been  taken  as  a  boy  to  Japan  and 
kept  under  the  influence  of  the  Japanese  court, 
was  to  marry  into  the  Japanese  royal  family. 
Three  days  before  the  wedding  was  to  take  place 
the  old  emperor  suddenly  died  under  circum- 
stances that  led  the  Korean  people  to  believe  that 
he  had  committed  suicide  so  that  the  marriage 
would  not  take  place — by  an  old  Korean  custom 
there  could  be  no  wedding  in  the  royal  family  for 
three  years  after  a  death.  This  costly  protest  of 
the  old  emperor  to  the  union  of  his  son  with  a 
Japanese  acted  as  a  spark  to  all  the  piled-up 
hatred  and  resentment  of  his  people.  Among  cer- 
tain of  the  educated  Koreans  there  had  long  been 
dreams  of  revolution  and  now  there  came  a  de- 
termination to  set  it  in  action. 

The  date  for  the  funeral  of  the  old  emperor 
was  set  for  March  3rd.  The  Japanese  police  ex- 
pected trouble,  but  they  were  taken  unawares 
when  on  Sunday  afternoon,  two  days  before  the 
funeral,  thousands  of  students  and  young  people 
ran  through  the  streets  of  Seoul  shouting: 
"Mansai!  Mansai!"  There  was  no  violence  of 
any  kind  on  the  part  of  the  paraders,  but  their 
cries  for  independence  brought  police  riot  calls 

119 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

and  they  were  clubbed  and  mauled  about  and 
some  hundreds  thrown  into  jail. 

Over  all  Korea  the  movement  spread  like  a  for- 
est fire.  Everywhere  there  were  parades  and 
demonstrations — with  the  police  using  their 
swords  and  finally  their  rifles.  According  to  the 
government  figure  there  were  from  March  1st  to 
July  2nd,  28,934  arrested.  Of  this  number  9,078 
were  flogged.  The  police  reports  show  631  were 
killed,  but  Koreans  say  the  actual  number  was 
several  times  larger.  Thousands  of  those 
arrested  were  tortured  in  ways  that  even  the  mas- 
ter torturers  of  the  days  of  the  Inquisition  could 
have  learned  from. 

The  violence  with  which  the  Japanese  police 
and  officials  struck  back  shocked  the  world;  and 
Japan,  sensitive  to  criticism,  ordered  a  change 
in  the  governing  officials.  Baron  Siato  was  sent 
as  governor-general  and  immediately  reforms 
were  promised — the  abolishing  of  the  custom  of 
flogging ;  the  establishment  of  free  press  and  free 
speech;  the  teaching  of  Korean  in  certain  of  the 
schools;  more  religious  freedom  and  the  reestab- 
lishment  of  certain  old  customs ;  and  a  less  vigor- 
ous police  system.  All  these  were  promised  and 
highly  advertised,  but  Koreans  say  that  many  of 
them  have  been  just  promises  and  that  the  petty 
under-officials  and  police  are  but  little  more 
humane  or  considerate  now  than  they  were  two 
years  ago. 

120 


STRUGGLING  KOREA 

After  all  you  can  almost  waste  a  little  pity  on 
Japan  even  at  the  same  moment  that  you  are 
swept  into  a  storm  of  anger  at  the  stupidity  and 
cruelty  of  her  record  in  this  heart-broken  penin- 
sula— because  Japan's  position  is  an  impossible 
one.  It  is  a  situation  that  has  no  answer  and 
offers  no  solution  for  Japan  except  the  giving 
of  full  independence  to  a  people  who  are  by  no 
means  ready  for  it — and  she  has  no  more  inten- 
tion of  doing  this  than  she  has  of  splitting  up  her 
own  island  empire.  By  immediate  and  dramatic 
reforms  and  generous  gifts  of  semi-independence 
she  might  sidetrack  this  Korean  independence 
revolution,  but  one  is  wasting  time  even  to  think 
about  this  because  present-day  Japan  does  not 
talk  this  language  of  democracy  and  international 
justice  and  fair  play. 

Japan's  promised  reforms  are  not  even  keep- 
ing pace  with  the  growth  of  the  revolutionary 
movement.  Instead  of  checking  it  with  generous 
actions  she  isn't  even  keeping  up  mth  it.  This 
determination  to  be  free  from  Japan  is  sinking 
itself  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  hearts  of  all  of 
the  seventeen  million  of  Korea's  people.  Every 
day  the  solution  is  becoming  more  difficult  and 
impossible.  The  best  that  Japan  can  hope  for  is  a 
temporary  victory  such  as  the  English  have  had 
in  India  and  Egypt. 

All  in  all  Japan  has  made  a  pitiful  mess  of  it. 
She  faces  to-day  a  race  of  people  who  apparently 

121 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

are  in  the  revolutionary  business  for  keeps.  She 
has  changed  front,  softened  her  old  policy  of  mili- 
tary colonization,  with  her  banks  and  railroads 
and  traders  and  land-grabbers  all  mixed  up 
together — but  it's  been  too  late.  She  has  discov- 
ered that  you  can't  hammer  the  swords  into  wel- 
come plowshares  after  once  the  sword  has  been 
stained  with  blood. 

New  demands  for  independence  and  fresh 
demonstrations  against  Japanese  rule  will  in  all 
probability  be  made.  They  may  continue  peace- 
ful demonstrations  of  parades  and  shouts  for 
Korean  independence,  but  they  "will  probably  be 
put  do"\vn  mth  force — because  it  is  impossible  for 
the  Japanese  military  mind  to  understand  any 
other  power  but  that  of  force.  And  the  more 
force  used  the  deeper  sinks  the  determination  for 
freedom. 

In  every  way  it  is  a  hopeless  and  thankless  job 
that  Japan  has  on  her  hands.  Korea  has  felt  the 
magic  mnds  of  self-determination  that  have  been 
blomng  over  the  world.  The  same  spirit  that  has 
swept  through  Poland,  Finland,  Czecho-Slovakia, 
Ireland,  Egypt,  India  and  even  touched  our  own 
smiling  Philippines  has  set  fire  to  men's  hearts 
here. 

But  it  was  far  more  than  any  call  for  national 
freedom  that  sent  men  and  women  down  the 
streets  of  Korean  cities  crying  "Mansai" — liter- 
ally translated  ''ten  thousands  years"  but  mean- 

122 


STRUGGLING  KOREA 

ing  liberty  forever.  It  was  far  more  than  the  sud- 
den setting  off  of  all  the  piled-up  hate  and  cruelty 
and  petty  interference  and  injustices  of  Japanese 
domination  that  had  been  practised  during  the 
ten  years  of  Japanese  annexation.  Deep  down 
the  whole  great  movement  was  almost  as  much 
a  demonstration  and  protest  against  economic 
injustices  as  against  political  injustices.  As  far 
as  the  uneducated  Korean  peasant  and  the  poor 
coolies  were  concerned  the  revolution  had  little 
of  the  glorious  thrill  of  men  fighting  for  their 
freedom;  it  was  a  protest  against  the  harshness 
of  landlords,  and  the  pettiness  and  stupidity  and 
overbearing  attitude  of  the  gendarmes  and  sol- 
diers and  civil  administrators. 

Yet  it  is  only  fair  to  write  that  Japan  has  done 
some  fine  things  in  Korea.  She  has  built  roads — 
although  they  are  mostly  military  roads ;  she  has 
opened  great  banks;  she  has  established  schools 
— although  she  insisted  for  years  that  only  the 
Japanese  language  be  taught.  She  has  done  these 
and  countless  other  things  that  have  helped 
Korea,  but  she  has  done  them  all  for  Japan  and 
not  for  Korea.  And  with  this  spirit  dominating 
her  she  failed  in  her  dream  of  assimilating  the 
Koreans.  She  failed  to  give  them  any  reason  for 
wanting  to  become  Nipponized.  She  tried  with 
bayonets  to  make  people  love  her. 

Can  she  still  come  back?     Can  she  not  only 
checkmate  this  revolutionary  movement  but  sat- 

123 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

isfy  it  and  win  the  revolting  Koreans?  Is  the 
independence  movement  so  deep  and  wide-spread 
that  nothing  can  more  than  temporarily  check 
it? 

I  went  among  Koreans  of  all  classes  trying  to 
find  the  answer.  I  found  abundant  proof  that 
there  was  little  spirit  of  compromise  in  the  Ko- 
rean people;  that  they  are  really  back  of  their 
revolution  and  will  never  be  permanently  satis- 
fied with  anything  short  of  full  independence. 

I  recall  now  the  story  of  a  primary  schoolboy 
sitting  up  in  his  bed  at  night  and  in  his  sleep 
shouting:  ^'Mansai!  Mansai!"  His  little  heart 
was  so  full  of  this  fight  for  independence  that  he 
dreamed  of  it  and  cried  its  magic  words  in  his 
sleep. 

An  eight-year-old  girl  coming  home  from  school 
one  afternoon  drew  the  forbidden  Korean  flag 
on  the  pavement  with  a  bit  of  chalk.  Three  or 
four  Korean  elders  cautioned  her  that  if  the 
police  saw  her  they  might  arrest  her  and  punish 
her. 

"I  would  not  care,''  she  answered,  **I  am 
doing  this  for  independence." 

So  it  goes  everywhere  over  his  reborn  land.  A 
fifteen-year-old  factory  boy  with  whom  I  talked 
one  day  on  the  outskirts  of  Seoul  proved  again  to 
me  what  magic  the  dreams  of  freedom  can  work. 

''Were  you  in  the  demonstrations  and  did  you 
shout  Mansaif"  I  asked. 

124 


STRUGGLING  KOREA 

**0f  course,"  he  answered. 

**And  are  you  going  to  take  part  in  more 
demonstrations  ? ' ' 

*'0f  course." 

*'But  you  might  be  arrested  and  beaten,"  I  sug- 
gested. 

''What  does  that  matter f"  he  answered  simply. 

''But  you  might  even  be  killed.  You  are  young 
and  you  have  many  things  to  live  for.  You  might 
be  killed." 

''Indeed  I  would  truly  live  forever  then,"  he 
answered.  "I  would  be  a  Korean  hero  and  men 
would  honor  me  forever. ' ' 

Pride  in  revolution!  Dreams  of  a  hero's 
death  I  Boys  growing  up  singing  the  eternal 
songs  of  independence ! 

So  again  let  it  be  written  that  the  fire  of  revo- 
lution burns  in  the  heart  of  every  Korean.  In 
some  it  still  is  only  a  dull  glow,  but  in  others  it  is 
a  flaming  spirit  that  can  never  be  put  out. 

The  hate  of  the  Korean  people  for  the  Japanese 
is  only  equaled  by  the  hate  of  the  Siberian  com- 
mon people  for  the  Japanese.  When  I  saw  how 
intense  this  was  in  Siberia  I  thought  I  had  never 
seen  anything  so  bitter  and  deep — but  that  was 
before  I  had  seen  how  these  simple  people  of  the 
once  Hermit  Kingdom  despise  and  distrust  and 
hate  these  men  from  Nippon. 

Hate  is  a  strange  tonic  to  give  strength  to  a 
broken  people,  but  it  has  worked  miracles  with 

125 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

the  Koreans.  For  this  hate  of  Japan,  with  the 
love  for  Korea,  has  given  new  life  and  fresh 
hopes  to  a  cause  that  seemed  lost  forever. 

Japan  faces  the  impossible  because  there  can 
be  no  lasting  answer  to  the  call  for  independence 
— except  independence. 


CHAPTER  VI 

rVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

To  TELL  of  the  unrest  and  revolt  of  the  East 
without  including  the  dramatic  recital  of  the 
unrest  of  great  Siberia  would  be  to  tell  but  half 
a  story. 

Yet  this  particular  tale  of  Siberia  that  I  have 
to  chronicle  isn't  about  Bolshevism  or  Bolsheviks 
— ^it's  about  a  plain,  simple  farmer  boy. 

His  fighting  comrades  called  him  "The  Jap 
Killer,"  and  he  had  a  record  that  warranted  the 
name.  He  was  only  a  kid,  a  fourteen-year-old 
kid,  who  should  have  been  in  school — had  there 
been  any  school  for  him.  For  days  I'd  heard 
tales  of  this  firebrand  of  a  boy  who  had  sworn 
to  die  fighting  the  Japanese.  Finally  I  reached 
the  Partizan  detachment  he  had  joined  and  his 
comrades  in  arms  brought  him  around  to  me. 

The  men  soldiers  left  the  room  when  he  came 
in;  only  the  boy  and  the  interpreter  and  myself 
remained. 

'  *  Tell  me  just  what  has  happened, ' '  I  asked  him 
directly. 

He  answered  in  a  tired  little  voice,  that  now 
and  then  showed  a  soggy  brutal  determination.    It 

127 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

was  a  story  grown  old,  but  its  very  repetition 
was  like  a  vow  resworn.  There  was  something 
almost  religious  about  it. 

"It  was  last  summer  and  I'd  gone  into  the  hills 
for  wood,  when  the  Japs  came  into  my  village," 
he  began.  **Some  one  had  told  them  that  my 
father  had  given  food  to  Partizan  troops,  and 
let  them  sleep  in  our  house — so  they  killed  him. 
Then  they  killed  my  mother  and  brother  and  sis- 
ter and  baby  brother,  and  burned  the  house. 
When  I  got  back  from  the  hills  with  my  load  of 
wood  I  found  out  all  that.  I  started  out  for 
revenge.  I've  killed  ten  Japs  already  and  I'll 
keep  on  until  the  last  Jap  in  Siberia  is  either 
killed  or  driven  out." 

''But  you  may  be  killed  yourself,"  I  suggested. 

"Nitchevo!'' — it  doesn't  matter — ''they  killed 
my  father :  he  was  a  better  man  than  I  am.  I  hate 
them.  I  shall  keep  on  fighting  until  either  I 
or  the  last  tnakaka  in  Siberia  is  killed." 

He  was  fourteen — an  ordinary  Siberian  boy. 
He  was  unafraid  to  die.  His  was  the  heart  and 
flaming  spirit  of  this  great  new  Siberia. 

For  six  years  he  and  his  older  brothers  and  his 
father  had  been  fighting  wars  and  revolutions, 
and  now  he  faces  another  conflict.  On  a  shaggy 
Siberian  pony  with  an  nondescript  rifle  and  a 
bandoleer  of  cartridges  he  fights  for  his  home 
and  his  land  and  his  future  liberties ;  he  fights  the 
brown  man  of  Japan  for  a  dozen  kings '  ransoms. 

128 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

Take  a  bleak  forest,  with  a  starving  pack  of 
gray  wolves  and  three  feet  of  snow  and  a  dashing 
troika  mth  a  man  and  his  bride  and  his  last  car- 
tridge, and  mix  mth  long  lines  of  ball-and-chain 
exiles  being  driven  into  the  hungry  mouths  of 
cruel  mines,  and  what's  the  result — a  composite 
picture  of  the  Average  Person's  idea  of  Siberia. 

Take  a  country  roughly  four  thousand  miles 
long  and  a  thousand  or  two  deep,  mth  millions 
upon  millions  of  smiling  acres,  the  most  valuable 
gold  mines  in  the  world  and  more  miles  of  navi- 
gable rivers  than  even  America  has,  and  mix  with 
virgin  forests  yet  untracked,  and  coal  and  ore  and 
platinum  and  precious  mines,  and  what's  the  re- 
sult— a  composite  picture  of  the  Siberia  of  reality. 

"The  last  great  frontier  of  the  white  man," 
some  one  had  called  this  land  of  undreamed  miles 
and  uncalculated  wealth.  And  it  is  a  land  for 
white  men,  a  half -world  that  will  help  to  conquer 
the  rest  of  the  world.  If  there  ever  was  a  coun- 
try worth  fighting  for  it  is  this  Siberia  that  we 
are  talking  about.  That's  what  the  little  men  of 
Japan  think.  And  that's  what  a  determined 
handful  of  white  men,  fighting  a  long  fight,  bat- 
tling for  almost  a  lost  cause  in  their  frozen  hills 
of  Eastern  Siberia,  think. 

Plain  drama  it  is — big  tremendous  drama, 
where  races  and  color  and  religions  and  cultures 
clash  and  fight ;  where  the  man  on  horseback  bat- 
tles the  hordes  from  the  rice  paddies.    And  this 

129 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OP  THE  EAST 

lone  white  man  is  worth  telling  about,  because 
few  understand  him,  and  while  he  fights  for  all 
his  race  and  color  no  one  of  his  own  kind  gives 
him  a  hand  or  a  word. 

Let's  consider  for  one  moment  the  situation  as 
it  is  in  Eastern  Siberia  in  the  early  days  of  1922. 
The  Japanese  Army  scattered  along  the  railroads 
and  rivers  of  the  Siberian  coast  line,  dominates 
local  governments  and  bullies  through  its  own 
ends.  It  dreams  of  gaining  by  hook  or  crook  the 
priceless  mines  and  petroleum  deposits  of  the 
northern  half  of  Saghalien;  of  controlling  the 
great  ore  deposits  of  the  Pre-Amur  Province. 
These  two  alone  would  give  to  Japan  the  material 
for  forging  the  weapons  for  future  wars.  The 
"World  War  taught  Japan  no  moral  lesson,  but  it 
did  teach  her  that  a  nation  which  failed  to  con- 
trol the  essentials  of  war  materials — coal  and 
iron — would  lose  a  modern  war. 

Military  Japan  must  have  the^e.  To  gain  na- 
tional wealth  she  would  grab  the  priceless  gold 
mines  and  the  fishing  rights  and  the  economic 
advantages  that  the  control  of  the  railroads  of 
Eastern  Siberia  would  give  her.  With  this  wealth 
and  these  raw  materials  in  twenty  years  she 
would  not  hesitate  to  force  any  issue  with  the 
Western  World. 

Japan  is  a  master  at  creating  situations.  By 
leaving  a  small  battalion  of  Japanese  troops  in 
the  frozen  city  of  Nickolayevsk  she  invited  the 
fighting  that  last  year  resulted  in  practically  the 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

annihilation  of  her  nationals  there.  She  called  it 
''the  Nickolayevsk  massacre,"  and  with  it  as  a 
match  she  attempted  through  pure  governmental 
propaganda  to  light  the  fire  of  false  patriotism  in 
her  people  at  home — most  of  whom  have  always 
been  opposed  to  the  whole  Siberian  adventure-^ 
and  gain  popular  consent  to  a  brutal  Siberian 
military  campaign. 

When  Japan  moves  she  advances  in  three  col- 
umns— her  army,  her  official  propaganda  agents 
and  her  commercial  interestSo  While  her  official 
propaganda  feeds  the  world  on  tales  of  red  terror 
in  Siberia,  her  armies  kill  the  game  that  her  com- 
mercial interests  later  gobble  up.  Assisting  in 
the  complete  breakdown  and  demoralization  of 
Eastern  Siberja  by  playing  one  side  against  the 
other,  Japan  has  secured  not  only  great  timber, 
mining  and  fishery  concessions,  but  her  protected 
nationals  have  purchased  for  a  song  valuable 
mining  properties  from  impoverished  and  fright- 
ened Siberians. 

She  demands  and  will  continue  to  demand  that 
all  these  concessions  granted  by  various  Cossack 
chiefs  and  these  properties  bought  even  after  they 
had  been  confiscated,  shall  be  recognized  and  pro- 
tected by  any  future  Siberian  Government.  How 
much  further  and  deeper  her  demands  will  go  no 
one  knows :  the  Siberian  Provisional  Government 
leaders  quote  the  French  proverb  that,  **  appetite 
grows  with  eating." 

Some  say  she  will  attempt  to  keep  the  northern 
131 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

half  of  Saghalien  and  at  least  dominate  the  won- 
derful port  of  Vladivostok.  This  city  whose 
name  freely  translated  means,  ''The  Ruler  of  the 
East,"  is  just  that.  It  controls  the  Pacific  end 
of  the  great  Trans-Siberian  railroad  and  with  it 
the  thousand-mile  Chinese  Eastern  railroad  that 
economically  dominates  the  northern  part  of  Man- 
churia: it  is  the  genuine  Ruler  of  the  East. 

It  is  a  district  and  a  future  that  fills  every 
dream  demand  of  Japan.  It  is  a  country  worth 
a  half  million  men — to  Japan.  It  is  a  land  that 
would  make  Japan  a  nation  to  be  more  than 
reckoned  with  by  the  whole  world. 

And  a  few  thousand  white  men  fight  to  drive 
back  these  invaders.  Their  cities  on  the  coast 
fly  the  flag  of  the  Rising  Sun:  they  have  only 
their  hills  and  ponies  and  their  rifles — and  their 
determination.  For  seven  years  they've  been 
fighting  wars  and  revolution.  And  yet  they  are 
still  battling. 

This  drama  of  Siberia  had  thrilled  me — but  I 
wanted  to  get  behind  the  scenes  and  touch  hands 
with  these  tragic  actors.  I  wanted  to  feel  the 
heart  beat  of  these  brave  common  people  who 
dared  to  fight  a  nation,  backed  by  the  world.  So 
with  an  interpreter  and  a  Partizan  spy  guide  I 
faded  out  of  the  Japanese  picture  in  Vladivostok. 
A  day's  journey  by  train  and  then  a  twenty-mile 
sled  ride  and  we  were  beyond  the  Japanese  lines 
and  in  the  deep  snow-blanketed  hills. 

133 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

It  was  almost  dusk  when  we  rounded  the  brow 
of  a  hill  and  looked  down  on  the  log  cabin  of  a 
half-dozen  woodchoppers,  nestling  in  the  valley 
below.  Apparently  the  road  was  watched,  for  in 
less  than  a  minute  after  we  had  come  into  view, 
two  men  left  the  house,  mounted  horses  and  gal- 
loped off  down  the  valley.  AVhen  we  had  trudged 
through  the  quarter-mile  of  snow  and  reached  the 
house  there  was  no  one  there  but  the  wood- 
choppers. 

I  wanted  to  go  back  into  the  hill  villages,  I  told 
them  through  my  interpreter.  I  was  an  American 
and  I  wanted  to  see  just  what  these  Siberian 
farmer  folk  were,  and  why  they  were  so  bitter 
against  the  Japanese.  They  told  me  they  would 
bring  one  of  the  Partizan  chiefs,  and  let  him  talk 
to  me.  In  five  minutes  they  had  saddled  one  of 
their  work  horses  and  trotted  off  toward  the  near- 
est village  held  by  these  anti- Japanese,  anti- 
Cossack,  peasant  soldiers — called  Partizans  in 
Siberia. 

We  waited,  and  while  we  rested  we  drank  tea. 
That's  Russia — waiting  and  drinking  tea.  Some 
day  when  Russia  gets  tired  of  waving  a  red  flag 
and  wants  another  she  should  design  a  samovar 
rampant  on  a  snowy  white  background. 

In  about  an  hour  four  Partizan  soldiers  gal- 
loped up  to  the  house  and  flinging  themselves 
from  their  ponies  in  best  revolutionary  style, 
pushed  open  the  low  wooden  door  and  entered. 

133 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

We  shook  hands  all  the  way  around,  and  then 
sat  down  at  the  candle-lit  table  to  discuss  affairs. 
It  was  all  full  of  color  and  warmth  and  drama: 
this  low-ceilinged  house  of  woodsmen,  with  two- 
thirds  of  the  space  taken  with  rough,  straw  cov- 
ered boards  resting  on  wooden  supports,  where 
the  men  slept:  the  group  at  the  table — the  tall 
dashing  leader,  a  mere  boy  with  a  blond  curl  dip- 
ping low  over  his  forehead ;  the  pock-marked  sec- 
ond in  command,  a  short  stubby  figure  in  his  white 
sheepskin  jacket  with  the  fur  turned  out;  and 
behind  in  the  shadow  of  the  single  candle  the  final 
fringe  of  the  ignorant  gentle  woodcutters.  The 
pock-marked  man  spoke  strange  words  of  Inter- 
nationalism, Communism  and  Karl  Marx  and  for 
the  tenth  of  a  second  you  could  catch  the  glimmer 
of  superior  patience  flash  over  the  faces  of  these 
men  of  the  woods  who  were  determined  to  cut  the 
way  to  their  own  freedom.  They,  too,  were  tired 
of  words  and  magic  phrases — they  wanted  some 
of  the  good  things  of  the  world. 

I  was  to  go  into  the  hills  and  I  would  be  wel- 
comed. I  could  stay  as  long  as  I  wanted  to,  and 
they  would  pledge  their  lives  that  I  would  not  fall 
into  the  hands  of  any  Japanese  troops.  We  drank 
another  gallon  of  tea  to  the  arrangement  and  for 
an  hour  sat  around  talking  of  wars  and  peace  and 
more  wars.  My  interpreter  explained  to  them 
that  I  had  been  in  Archangel  and  Moscow  the 
year  before,  and  they  plied  me  with  questions 

134 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

about  conditions  there.  The  stubby,  pock-marked 
man,  I  discovered,  was  from  the  outside  world: 
all  the  others  were  Siberians  who  knew  only  of 
their  home  provinces. 

At  eight  one  of  the  woodcutters  announced  that 
the  horses  were  ready,  so  we  bundled  into  our 
fur  coats,  and  climbed  in  the  peasant  sled.  Two 
of  the  mounted  men  rode  ahead  and  the  remaining 
two  brought  up  behind.  There  was  no  moon,  but 
the  stars  were  brilliant.  It  must  have  been  thirty 
degrees  below  zero,  and  now  and  then  we  would 
crawl  off  the  low  sled  and  walk  for  half  a  mile 
or  so;  even  heavy  overshoes  could  not  keep  one's 
feet  from  freezing  in  such  temperature. 

After  some  two  hours  we  passed  a  great  ghost 
of  a  building,  lying  roofless  and  with  broken  win- 
dows, like  the  gigantic  skull  of  some  brick  and 
mortar  skeleton.  One  of  the  Partizans  galloped 
alongside  the  sled  and  explained  that  the  building 
was  the  ruins  of  the  once  famous  Piankoff's 
vodka  distillery,  that  had  been  burned  down 
months  before,  by  the  peasants  of  the  district.  In 
the  fall  of  1914,  following  the  czar's  temperance 
edict,  it  had  been  closed  down,  and  it  had  re- 
mained shut  during  the  Kerensky  regime,  and 
during  the  short  period  that  followed  when  the 
Soviets  held  forth  in  Siberia.  But  mth  the  com- 
ing of  Kolchak  it  had  reopened  and  Japanese  sol- 
diers had  been  sent  out  to  guard  it.  But  the 
peasants  wanted  none  of  the  vodka  and  none  of 

135 


THE  EISINa  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

the  Japanese  so  one  warm  June  night  they  or- 
ganized, and  sweeping  down  from  the  hills, 
destroyed  it.  Alcohol,  I  have  found,  has  come 
for  good  and  all  into  Russia.  The  peasants  over 
the  great  spread  of  Russia  are  finished  with 
vodka:  Soviet  Russia  has  always  prohibited  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  high  proof  spirits,  and 
it  was  only  in  the  districts  held  by  the  ' 'Whites" 
that  vodka  was  permitted  to  be  sold. 

Even  before  I  had  touched  hands  with  them, 
this  ruined  distillery  taught  me  a  good  deal  about 
my  Siberian  folk.  It  had  been  built  here  so  that 
it  could  get  mthout  high  freightage  charges  the 
grain  these  small  farmers  grew,  and  so  it  offered 
them  a  good  market  and  high  prices  for  their 
produce.  But  they  had  burned  it  down  because 
first  of  all  they  did  not  want  their  sons  to  have  the 
vodka,  and  they  could  not  stand  to  see  the  hated 
makakas — Japanese — strutting  about  their  hills. 

It  was  almost  midnight  when  we  reached  the 
little  village  with  its  row  of  low  one-storied 
houses,  built  along  the  single  wide  street.  A 
frozen  creek  touched  its  borders  here  and  there 
like  some  silver  ribbon  flung  carelessly  down  the 
narrow  valley  by  a  giant's  hand.  Inside  the  house 
of  Dubrovin  we  found  a  score  of  peasant  soldier 
boys  lolling  about  the  great  Dutch  oven  in  the 
kitchen,  humming  to  the  music  of  a  guitar.  They 
were  billeted  here,  and  of  the  three  rooms  in  the 
house  they  had  willingly  been  given  two.    The 

136 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

bearded  peasant  owner,  and  his  kindly  hospitable 
wife,  with  their  four  children,  wanted  only  one 
room.  These  fighting  boys  were  their  own  fight- 
ing boys,  whose  battles  were  their  battles,  and 
whose  victories  were  their  victories.  It  was  one 
great  family,  and  a  willing  family.  They  took 
their  scanty  meals  from  the  same  mother  pot,  and 
they  drank  their  tea  from  the  same  samovar. 

**See  the  boy  there  in  the  corner — he  is  my 
son,'*  the  gentle  old  peasant  housewife  proudly 
said  to  me,  as  she  nodded  slyly  to  a  great  raw- 
boned  country  lad,  with  a  carbine  strapped  over 
his  shoulder.  Then  she  went  on  mth  all  the  pride 
there  was  in  her  heart:  ''He's  fighting  the 
Japanese  for  me." 

And  I  found  it  the  same  everywhere  among 
these  frozen  hills.  This  army  of  Partizan  soldiers 
was  a  peasant  army,  and  these  old  mothers  and 
fathers  were  real  mothers  and  fathers,  and  these 
fighting  sons  were  real  sons — their  sons  and  the 
sons  of  the  peasants  of  the  next  hill  village. 

Ideals  taught  by  candle-light,  it  seemed  to  me, 
were  the  essence  of  these  Siberian  farmer  folk; 
ideals  that  meant  something  because  they  had  to 
be  fought  for  and  sacrificed  for  and  paid  for. 
There  are  other  ideals  besides  candle-lit  ideals, 
but  men  do  not  give  their  lives  so  freely  for  elec- 
tric lighted  ideals,  nor  do  they  burn  so  brightly 
as  those  of  the  pine  knots  and  the  tallow  dips. 
CiviHzations  and  super-progress  does  take  some- 

137 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

thing  out  of  men's  hearts — it  takes  the  fire  and 
the  dare  and  the  punch.  Life  does  become  too 
precious  the  moment  that  it's  worth  more  than 
its  ideals  are  worth. 

A  sixteen-year-old  peasant  boy  named  Audrey 
proved  all  this  that  follomng  morning.  In  his 
farai  sled  he  drove  us  up  and  do^vn  the  hills, 
through  two  tiny  hamlets  to  the  village  of 
Rakovka,  and  while  he  urged  his  lazy  ponies  into 
a  trot  he  would  answer  our  questions  in  a  low 
soft  voice,  looking  squarely  at  us  out  of  eyes  that 
were!  used  to  gazing  on  hills  and  valleys  and 
honest  things.  There  was  no  guile  in  his  heart, 
and  no  deceit  on  his  lips. 

' '  What  is  it  that  you  Siberians  want  ? "  I  asked 
him  through  my  interpreter. 

**We  want  the  Japanese  to  leave  our  country," 
he  answered,  turning  from  his  horses. 

"What  else?" 

"Svohoda."  (Freedom.) 

* 'What's  that!" 

*'Land  and  some  other  things." 

*'Do  you  want  them  bad  enough  to  die  for 
them?"    I  questioned. 

''Of  course,"  he  answered  very  simply. 

"But  you  are  young,  and  there  are  many  fine 
things  ahead  that  you  would  miss.  Surely  you 
wouldn't  give  your  life  for  svoboda." 

"Oh,  yes — because  I  would  be  dying  for  my 
ideal,"  he  answered. 

138 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

I  persisted  in  my  searching  for  the  real  heart 
of  this  boy.  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  if  by 
going  to  the  crest  of  that  hill  you  could  drive  out 
the  Japanese  and  get  your  precious  svohoda,  but 
that  you'd  be  kiUed,  that  you  would  do  it?" 

*'0f  course,  because  I  would  be  dying  for  my 
ideal." 

I  wanted  to  reach  out  and  put  my  arms  about 
this  sixteen-year-old  boy  who  would  have  been 
happy  to  die  for  his  ideal.  He'd  never  seen  an 
American  before,  he  told  me,  and  he  didn't  know 
just  where  America  was,  but  his  was  the  heart  of 
the  best  of  America :  his  was  the  fighting  soul  of 
the  boys  of  America  of  other  generations  when 
there  was  American  svohoda  to  be  fought  for. 
And  his  was  the  great  heart  of  these  Siberian 
folk. 

"Who  told  you  about  these  wonderful  ideals?" 
I  asked  him. 

"My  father,"  he  answered. 

Candle-lit  ideals,  I  thought — simple  courageous 
ideals  of  real  patriots. 

He  sat  silent  for  a  long  time  and  then  he  turned 
from  his  horses.  "We  mil  all  die  fighting  Japan. 
We  hate  the  makakas.  But  we've  nothing  against 
America.  We'll  fight  to  drive  out  the  Japanese, 
but  if  America  took  Siberia  we  wouldn't  care 
very  much.  We  know  America  is  a  free  countiy, 
and  that  she  would  give  us  the  land  and  freedom. 
But  we'll  all  die  fighting  the  makakas.*' 

139 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

I  knew  that  in  the  heart  of  this  simple,  un- 
spoiled peasant  boy,  echoing  his  father's  words 
about  ideals,  that  I  had  found  the  real  pulsing, 
breathing  heart  of  Russia's  one  hundred  and 
fifty  million  peasants.  No  one  who  hasn't  seen 
the  tears  in  their  eyes  can  know  what  dreams  they 
have  of  education  and  what  hopes  of  freedom, 
and  what  thoughts  of  having  just  a  little  of  the 
good  things  of  the  world,  and  how  they  want  the 
Japanese  troops  to  go  and  let  them  settle  their 
own  affairs  their  own  way.  These  people  and 
their  dreams  are  still  to  be  discovered  by  the 
world,  yet  they  are  Russia — the  real  Russia  of 
the  future.  They  are  the  eighty-five  per  cent,  of 
the  millions  of  this  great  republic. 

This  night  at  the  village  of  Rakovka  a  dozen  of 
the  peasants  came  over  to  the  house  to  see  me. 
They  drifted  into  the  tiny  double-windowed  room, 
one  at  a  time,  and  stood  silent  on  the  edge  of  the 
circle  looking  at  me.  None  of  them  had  ever  seen 
a  foreigner  before  and  at  first  they  couldn't  un- 
derstand why  I  was  there.  The  next  morning  the 
dashing  chief  of  the  detachment,  who  lived  with 
his  widowed  mother  in  this  same  village,  said  to 
me:  "When  the  peasants  first  saw  you  last  night 
they  resented  your  being  in  their  hill  village,  but 
after  they  saw  how  you  only  wanted  to  find  the 
truth  they  wept." 

That  was  a  wonderful  night:  the  half  hun- 
dred soldiers  crowded  about  the  pine  table  where 

140 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

we  ate  supper  from  the  single  great  dish;  and 
on  the  fringe  of  the  crowd  the  bearded  old  peas- 
ants sucking  in  the  words  like  hungry  men  starv- 
ing for  new  hopes  of  freedom.  There  was  a  story 
in  every  soldier  there,  and  a  novel  in  every  leader 
at  the  table.  Neither  time  nor  adventure  mil 
ever  make  me  forget  the  bearded  old  Cossack 
from  Orenburg,  in  South  Russia,  who  was  moth- 
ering and  fathering  all  these  farmer-soldier  boys. 
His  wrist  had  been  broken  by  a  Japanese  rifle 
bullet,  and  his  left  hand  was  useless,  and  when 
he  told  me  of  his  wife  and  four  children  at 
the  other  end  of  Russia  his  eyes  were  warm  with 
tears.  At  home  he  was  a  school-teacher,  and  a 
member  of  the  Cossack  Council,  and  had  been  sen- 
tenced to  life  imprisonment  in  Siberia  because, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Bolshevik  revolution, 
when  Ataman  Dutoff  had  asked  the  Cossack 
Council  for  authority  to  hang  a  Cossack  colonel 
who  had  refused  to  fight  the  Bolshevik,  this  old 
fellow  had  said  aloud  in  meeting:  ''Try  hanging 
yourself  first,  Ataman  Dutoff,  and  if  it  does 
you  any  good  then  hang  your  colonel." 

Nor  will  I  ever  forget  the  Dreamer  who  had 
been  a  revolutionist  from  boyhood.  In  the  1905 
revolution  he  had  been  sentenced  for  life  in  the 
Siberian  mines  and  had  served  mitil  the  Keren- 
sky  revolution  had  released  him.  He  was  no 
Communist — only  a  revolutionist,  and  now  a 
patriot  fighting  brown  men  who  would  take  his 

141 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

country.  Excepting  these  two  from  the  outside 
world  all  were  native  Siberian  peasant  fighters. 
Even  their  chief,  Stepanenko,  had  never  been  a 
hundred  miles  from  his  hills. 

He  was  a  figure  after  your  own  heart,  this 
Stepanenko.  A  great  black  beard  covered  his 
face,  and  he  looked  tired  and  worn  and  old,  but 
he  confessed  that  he  was  only  twenty-six.  He 
was  going  to  take  us  to  stay  at  what  was  left  of 
his  house  after  the  Japs  had  finished  with  it,  but 
at  the  last  moment  he  decided  differently:  *'My 
mother  always  cries  so  when  she  sees  me  when 
I  get  home,"  he  explained  simply:  **she  is  so 
afraid  that  something  will  happen." 

I  had  never  in  my  life  seen  such  love  for  men 
as  these  peasants  of  his  bore  for  him.  A  dozen 
of  them  whispered  to  me  that  they  would  give 
their  lives  gladly  for  him.  And  I  know  that  he 
would  give  his  life  just  as  freely  for  them. 

**We  shall  lay  down  our  rifles  and  go  to  farm- 
ing again  as  soon  as  the  Japanese  are  driven  out 
and  we  get  our  liberty  and  the  land,"  he  ex- 
plained. *'We  are  only  peasants,  fighting  for 
what  we  believe  to  be  right.  We  were  willing  to 
support  the  Omsk  directory  when  it  promised  us 
democratic  government.  But  it  did  not  give  us 
democracy.  It  gave  us  instead  Kolchak  and  the 
Japanese:  and  Kolchak  conscripted  us  and  took 
our  horses  and  food  and  gave  us  no  freedom.  So 
we  fought  and  defeated  him,  and  we  will  fight 

142 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

always  for  the  things  we  believe  in.  We  will  fight 
the  Japanese  until  the  last  man  of  us  is  killed." 

Over  and  over  again  I  heard  the  same  thought 
that  night  until  I  grew  convinced  that  in  nowise 
were  these  men  radical  men,  but  merely  straight 
farmers  fighting  for  what  they  believed  to  be 
right  and  just.  For  hours  on  end  they  asked  me 
questions  about  America  and  Japan  and  then  in 
turn  they  answered  mine.  One  by  one  the  tired 
soldiers  and  old  peasants  drifted  away,  until  at 
midnight  only  the  dozen  men  billeted  in  the  house 
remained.  Slowly  they  began  spreading  their 
sheepskin  coats  on  the  floor,  pulling  off  their 
boots,  unstrapping  their  pistols  and  soon  we  were 
all  stretched  out  on  the  uncarpeted  planks.  The 
old  Cossack  blew  out  the  candle,  and  then,  in  the 
darkness,  the  Dreamer,  who  'd  spent  fifteen  years 
of  his  life  in  Siberian  prisons,  began  humming  a 
revolutionary  song.  In  a  minute  the  others  were 
nibbling  at  it,  and  soon  the  dozen  men  had  thrown 
their  hearts  into  the  singing.  I  couldn't  under- 
stand the  words  of  the  song,  but  the  low,  plain- 
tive, thrilling  music  swept  into  my  heart,  and  I 
was  glad  that  there  was  no  light  to  show  the  tears 
in  my  eyes. 

I  awoke  in  the  morning  mth  the  sun  streaming 
in  through  the  double  windows.  My  bunkies 
were  pulling  on  their  boots,  and  strapping  on 
their  pistols.  I  pulled  on  my  own  shoes  and  took 
my  turn  at  splashing  myself  with  cold  water  in 

143 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

the  kitchen.  Ten  minutes  later  we  sat  down  with 
the  chief  and  the  Dreamer  and  the  old  Cossack 
to  a  breakfast  of  tea  and  black  bread  and  country- 
sausage.  We  ate  true  Russian  peasant  style,  with 
wooden  spoons  from  the  same  dish. 

At  eleven  a  delegation  of  peasants  arrived  with 
an  invitation  for  me  to  attend  their  Sunday  morn- 
ing village  assembly,  so  we  started  off  with  them. 
We  walked  a  quarter  of  a  mile  doAvn  the  broad 
single  street  and  then  entered  one  of  the  small 
one-story  houses.  The  room  was  packed  with 
bearded  old  peasants.  They  asked  that  all  the 
soldiers  leave,  so  that  we  would  be  alone  with 
them.  The  Partizans  smilingly  withdrew,  and, 
seated  at  a  table,  we  faced  these  men  to  whom 
this  fight  against  Japan  and  this  whole  revolu- 
tion were  things  as  sacred  and  holy  as  their  reli- 
gion. Only  a  feAV  of  them  could  read  and  write 
and  none  of  them  had  ever  seen  an  American 
before. 

**Just  what  is  it  that  you  Siberians  want?"  I 
asked  very  directly. 

*'We  want  the  Japanese  to  get  out  and  leave 
us  alone,"  one  of  their  spokesmen  answered. 

**And  what  else  do  you  want?" 

"Land  and  freedom,"  a  half-dozen  answered. 

It  was  the  old  cry — " Zemla  e  svohoda" — that 
had  echoed  for  a  century  from  one  end  of  great 
Russia  to  the  other. 

**And  will  the  Soviets  give  it  to  you?" 

144 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

''Yes — and  if  they  do  not,  we  will  fight  on  until 
we  get  it,"  one  old  man  answered  and  the  others 
nodded  their  heads. 

For  the  moment  Soviet  was  a  magic  word  for 
them  and  in  it  they  saw  their  dreams  of  land  and 
freedom.  But  there  had  been  other  magic  words 
too,  and  some  of  them  had  lost  their  charm,  but 
''Land  and  Freedom,"  never.  If  Soviet  failed 
they  would  fight  on  and  on  and  on.  They  wanted 
the  land  for  themselves — all  of  it — and  nothing  on 
this  earth  was  strong  enough  to  keep  them  from 
having  it. 

It  is  difficult  for  America  to  grasp  this  land 
problem  here  in  Russia  and  to  realize  how  deep 
it  has  smik  itself  into  the  hearts  of  the  great 
Russian  majorities.  Before  1861  practically  all 
the  land  was  owned  by  the  court,  the  church  and 
the  great  landlords,  and  it  was  worked  by  serfs 
who  were  part  of  the  estates.  For  the  most  part 
the  work  was  done  on  the  share  basis  and  the  serf 
attached  to  the  land  looked  upon  it  as  his,  just  as 
he  thought  that  he  belonged  to  it.  In  1861  when 
he  was  freed  the  village  in  which  he  lived  was 
permitted  to  buy  part  of  the  great  estates  and 
farm  the  land  on  the  commmial  system.  This 
meant  that  the  land  was  divided  among  the  fam- 
ilies according  to  number  and  at  the  end  of  from 
five  to  ten  years  redivided.  The  village  paid  for 
the  land  by  yearly  instalments,  but  so  small  was 
the  plot  allotted  to  each  family  that  the  peasant 

145 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

was  in  many  cases  worse  off  than  he  had  been  be- 
fore. 

This  was  especially  true  of  the  peasants  who 
remained  on  the  great  estates  as  hired  hands. 
They  had  only  their  eternal  ceaseless  dream  of 
land.  In  1905  this  dream  was  lit  by  the  fire  of 
revolt  and  terrible  revolution  followed.  The 
world  thinks  of  the  1905  revolution  as  a  city  revo- 
lution, but  it  was  really  a  peasant  revolution. 
Peasants  burned  the  houses  of  the  great  estates, 
killed  hundreds  of  landlords,  and  in  turn  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  them  were  killed.  But  it 
was  like  killing  sheep;  these  peasants  could  only 
fight  with  scythes  against  professional  hired  sol- 
diers with  machine-guns. 

Things  were  different  in  the  next  revolution, 
1917.  After  the  army  debacle  of  July,  1917,  the 
farmer-boy  soldiers  took  their  rifles  and  machine- 
guns  and  went  home.  Many  of  them  killed  their 
landlords  and  burned  the  great  houses  and 
divided  up  the  estates.  The  stabler,  more  intel- 
ligent peasants,  took  the  advice  of  their  Social 
Revolutionist  political  leaders,  who  told  them  to 
wait  until  the  Constitutional  Assembly  could 
decide  how  the  land  was  to  be  taken  over  by  them 
and  distributed.  But  Lenine  dissolved  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  and  declared  for  peace,  and 
gave  the  poorer  peasants  permission  to  take  over 
the  estates  themselves.  Yet  peace  did  not  come 
and  Lenine  clamped  down  his  commissars,  orders, 

146 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

requisitions,  mobilizations,  and  a  score  of  brutal 
things  on  them.  Millions  of  them  were  against 
Lenine — but  there  was  nowhere  else  for  them  to 
turn.  Kolchak,  Denekin  and  the  others  gave 
them  only  hollow  promises,  that  blew  up  like  a 
bubble  whenever  tested.  The  old  military  crowd 
and  the  old  landowners  crowded  about  these 
** white  hopes,"  and  the  peasants  saw  that  they 
could  dream  of  nothing  but  a  victory  for  reac- 
tion. If  there  had  been  a  third  party,  a  fair, 
democratic  body,  they  would  have  turaed  to  it — • 
most  of  the  one  hundred  fifty  million,  and  by  the 
very  force  of  their  numbers  they  would  have 
pulled  Lenine  do^vn  just  as  they  pulled  Kolchak 
down.  But  there  was  no  place  for  them  to  turn, 
except  toward  Moscow. 

So  this  Sunday  morning,  in  this  hill  village, 
these  Siberian  peasants  told  me  that  first  they 
would  drive  out  Japan,  and  then  turn  their  eyes 
toward  the  Soviets,  and  that  if  Moscow  did  not 
give  them  what  they  wanted,  they  would  fight  on 
until  they  got  it.  And  they  will — and  they  will 
win.  Russia  will  be  a  peasant  republic  sooner 
than  any  one  dreams.  It  can  not  be  anything 
else,  because  they  are  eighty-five  per  cent,  of 
Russia's  uncounted  millions,  and  the  day  is  here 
when  eighty-five  per  cent,  will  always  rule. 

Other  wonderful  days  there  were,  there  in  the 
frozen  hills  of  Eastern  Siberia,  when  these  things 
were  proved  even  more  vividly  and  surely  for  me. 

147 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

And  times  without  number  I  felt  the  warm 
friendly  pulse  of  Russia,  beating  to  the  same  time 
that  the  heart  of  America  is  set  to. 

I  recall  now  one  special  ride  through  these 
snow-blanketed  hills.  My  driver,  this  time,  was 
not  a  young  boy,  dreaming  of  dying  for  his  ideal, 
but  an  old  man  who  had  been  all  his  life  in  Siberia. 
I  asked  him  to  tell  me  just  what  he  thought  about 
America. 

**  America  did  some  few  things  against  us  when 
they  first  came  here,  but  we  don't  mind  them  now 
that  America  has  gone,"  he  went  on  slowly.  *'She 
did  help  Kolchak  and  the  military,  but  she  didn't 
know  what  they  were:  as  soon  as  she  found  out, 
she  stopped.  She  didn't  understand  that  they 
were  not  working  for  the  people,  but  only  for 
themselves.  We  know  America  wants  nothing 
from  us,  and  that  she  is  the  only  one  that  didn't 
want  something  from  us.  Japan  is  different.  We 
hate  her  and  we  shall  fight  her  forever." 

He  was  Siberia  speaking — the  great  coming 
Siberia.  He  couldn't  read  nor  write,  but  he  could 
think  straight  as  a  die  about  such  things  as  lib- 
erty, freedom,  justice.  I  was  like  a  man  standing 
for  the  first  time  before  some  tremendous,  won- 
derful thing  of  God. 

He  went  on  urging  his  lazy,  shaggy,  Siberian 
ponies,  covered  with  snow  and  frost.  Pretty 
soon  he  turned  in  his  seat:  "America  is  a  great 
free  country,  and  if  America  will  help  Siberia 

148 


IVAN  THE  JAP  KILLER 

there  will  be  two  great  free  countries,  and  they 
will  make  the  whole  world  free.  As  I  work  here 
among  these  hills,  I  often  dream  of  how  it  mil 
be  some  day:  way  over  there  free  democratic 
America,  and  over  here  free  democratic  Siberia. 
We  shall  be  great  friends  and  we  shall  make  the 
whole  world  free." 

I  thought  of  nations  of  small  souls  and  dwarf 
hearts,  dreaming  of  world  power  and  world  con- 
quest. I  thought  how  foolish  and  futile  their 
unworthy  ambitions  were  before  the  two  great 
hearts  that  some  day  would  beat  together  to  music 
that  this  Siberian  peasant  had  dreamed. 

''Way  over  there  free  democratic  America,  and 
over  here  free  democratic  Siberia.  We  shall  be 
great  friends  and  we  shall  make  the  whole  world 
free.  ..." 


CHAPTER  VII 

WHITE    AUSTEALIA 

It  is  a  big  jump  from  the  frozen  hills  of  Siberia 
to  the  tropical  lands  of  North  Queensland  and 
the  smiling  acres  of  New  South  Wales,  but  if  one 
would  know  the  full  story  of  the  New  Pacific  and 
the  world's  unrest  one  must  travel  far. 

In  the  chapters  that  have  preceded  this  I  have 
told  of  the  cry  of  ''India  for  the  Indians" — 
** China  for  the  Chinese" — ''Japan  for  the  Japan- 
ese." Here  in  this  great  Southland  there  is  still 
another  cry — "Australia  for  the  white  man." 

Somehow  the  other  slogans  sound  perfectly 
reasonable  and  fine,  while  this  one  that  has  to  do 
with  a  White  Australia  seems  far-fetched  and  un- 
necessary.   And  yet  .    .    . 

The  man  who  first  painted  white  Australia  in 
vivid  colors  for  me  was  the  "guard"  on  the  train 
that  had  the  Brisbane  end  of  the  Brisbane-Sydney 
run. 

I  suppose  what  attracted  him  to  my  compart- 
ment was  my  American  accent.  He  began  talking 
to  me  about  what  odd  habits  Americans  had  and 
how  a  friend  of  his  who  had  been  in  the  States 
had  remarked  to  him  that  Americans  were  rare 

150 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

birds  because  they  shifted  their  forks  when  they 
ate.  I  wanted  some  more  of  these  strange  obser- 
vations so  I  asked  him  to  have  a  seat  alongside 
me. 

We  talked  railroading  for  a  time  and  then 
swung  into  the  popular  topic  of  the  high  cost  of 
living  and  from  there  to  union  hours  and  Lloyd 
George  and  finally  I  mentioned  white  Australia  to 
him. 

*'We  don't  want  any  of  those  brown  beggars  in 
here,"  he  explained  to  me.  ''They  work  twice 
as  long  and  for  one-half  the  pay  we  work  for.  No 
sir,  we're  going  to  keep  Australia  clean  white. 
We'll  fight  England  or  Japan  or  anybody  for 
that.  Ugh !  There 's  one  of  those  Japanese  gents 
in  the  front  compartment  of  this  car.  He's  a 
commercial  traveler,  but  I  hate  him  just  the  same. 
They  got  to  whip  us  before  they  can  come  in  here. 
I  was  cold  on  this  conscription  for  the  Great  War, 
but  they  can  take  me  any  time  to  fight  these 
Japs." 

Apparently  nothing  else  had  interested  him.  But 
he  was  talking  now  with  sober  repressed  sincer- 
ity. He  was  stating  a  political  code  that  was 
nothing  short  of  a  religion  to  him. 

That's  exactly  what  this  doctrine  of  white  Aus- 
tralia is — a  religion;  the  fervent,  fanatical  and 
sacred  determination  of  five  and  one-half  million 
people  to  keep  a  great  continent  for  themselves — 
for  their  own  race  and  color  and  faith. 

151 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

To  the  great  majority  of  Australians  this  new 
religion  of  Oriental  exclusion  at  any  cost  and  at 
any  sacrifice  is  a  living  breathing  thing — just  as 
it  was  to  this  train  guard  in  Queensland.  It  is 
Australia.  She  will  fight  for  it  and  she  will  die 
for  it.  No  League  of  Nations,  no  Association  of 
Nations — not  even  the  British  Empire — can  force 
her  to  change  this  religion.    It  is  her  very  life. 

On  its  face  value  one  might  easily  suggest  that 
even  if  this  is  a  political  religion  it  is  distinctly 
Australia's  business  and  of  little  importance  to 
the  rest  of  the  world.  But  this  is  a  wrong  con- 
clusion because  it  is  distinctly  of  grave  impor- 
tance to  the  peace  and  welfare  of  the  whole 
world.  For  this  doctrine  of  white  Australia  has  a 
tremendous  bearing  on  the  whole  question  of 
racial  equality  as  advanced  by  Japan. 

And  racial  equality  may  be  shouted  at  any  mo- 
ment with  greater  vehemence  and  determination 
than  it  has  ever  been  cried  before.  It  is  one  of 
the  unanswerables — one  of  the  unsolvables.  For 
eventually  with  Japan  will  be  the  great  voice  of 
China  with  her  four  hundred  million  and  India 
with  her  three  hundred  fifteen  million.  It  is 
the  ultimate  cry  of  more  than  one-half  of  the  peo- 
ples of  this  earth — ^people  still  barely  learning  to 
lisp,  yet  whose  voice  some  day  will  shake  the 
world ! 

Australia  refuses  and  mil  continue  to  refuse 
to  heed  this  clamoring — and  nothing  can  change 

152 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

her.  She  is  determined  to  keep  her  great,  quarter- 
developed  continent  for  herself — to  keep  it  at  any 
cost  and  any  sacrifice.  For  twenty  years  she  has 
been  reaffirming  this  determination  until  it  has 
become  a  faith. 

To-day  no  Asiatic  native  can  enter  Australia — • 
unless  he  be  a  student  or  merchant  or  traveler. 
An  elastic  educational  test  that  all  immigrants 
must  pass  keeps  him  out;  a  fifty- word  dictation 
test  that  may  include  any  and  all  European  lan- 
guages. There  is  no  written  law  that  discrim- 
inates against  him  in  any  way — he  simply  must 
pass  an  educational  test  that  may  be  stretched  to 
exclude  a  coolie  who  might  be  learned  enough  to 
wear  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key. 

And  this  religion  of  a  white  Australia  is  no  sud- 
den burst  of  racial  hate  or  fear  of  invasion :  it  is 
a  slow-moving,  ever-increasing  political  philoso- 
phy that  has  now  reached  to  the  very  roots  of 
Australia's  national  soul. 

It  was  born  two  decades  ago  of  purely  economic 
parentage.  At  that  time  there  were  a  few  thou- 
sand Oriental  coolies  in  the  country  and  some 
thousands  of  Kanaka  laborers  in  the  sugar  dis- 
tricts of  north  Queensland.  But  there  were 
enough  Asiatics  and  South  Sea  natives  to  prove 
to  the  Australian  workmen  that  direct  competi- 
tion with  the  cheap  coolies  of  Asia,  with  their 
low  standard  of  living,  was  a  brutal  unnecessary 
test. 

153 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

It  was  Australian  workmen  who  first  demanded 
a  white  Australia — but  it  is  the  Australian  mid- 
dle-class nationalists  with  all  their  pride  of  coun- 
try and  race  and  color  whose  voices  are  loudest 
now  in  disseminating  this  political  religion. 

Australia  has  a  greater  land  area  than  the 
United  States  (excluding  Alaska),  yet  her  total 
white  population  is  less  than  five  and  one-half 
millions.  Of  the  non-Europeans  there  are  in 
round  numbers  37,000  made  up  as  follows :  23,000 
Chinese  (one-fourth  British-born),  6,000  Hindus 
and  other  Indian  races,  3,000  Japanese,  2,000 
other  Asiatics,  2,500  Polynesians  and  500  others. 
In  addition  there  are  estimated  to  be  some  30,000 
Australian  aboriginals. 

Of  the  great  area  of  Australia  about  one-third 
is  or  can  be  made  productive — two-thirds  make 
up  the  Never-Never  country  that  is  good  for  little 
else  than  fiction.  But  this  one-third  can  readily 
support  one  hundred  million  people — and  Aus- 
tralia to-day  has  fewer  inhabitants  than  the 
single  city  of  New  York. 

The  northeast  country  is  tropical  and  semi- 
tropical  and  here  are  millions  of  acres  of  unde- 
veloped lands  that  can  be  used  for  sugar,  cotton 
and  other  tropical  and  semi-tropical  products. 
It  is  particularly  in  this  tropical  district  where 
Asiatic  coolies  and  Kanaka  laborers  could  be  per- 
manently settled,  that  one  faces  the  great  moral 
issue  of  the  right  of  a  nation  to  build  a  waU  of 

154 


^HITE  AUSTRALIA 

exclusion  around  itself  while  its  rich  lands  lie 
idle  and  undeveloped. 

Scientists  have  been  wrangling  for  generations 
over  the  effect  of  tropical  life  on  the  white  man. 
This  question  has  a  deep  bearing  on  the  whole 
problem  of  a  white  Australia.  Recently  in  their 
convention  in  Brisbane,  Queensland,  the  National 
Medical  Conference  devoted  an  entire  session  to 
the  discussion  of  this  very  point.  Medical  men 
who  had  lived  for  years  in  the  tropical  sugar  cane 
country  of  northern  Queensland  gave  it  as  their 
opinion  that  white  men  could  live  and  prosper 
in  the  tropics  if  they  took  proper  care  of  them- 
selves. 

This  pronouncement  was  hailed  with  delight  by 
the  white  Australianists.  They  were  not  cheat- 
ing the  world  of  the  food  that  must  some  day  be 
grown  in  these  tropical  lands  that  now  are  fallow. 
They  point  to  the  Queensland  sugar  plantations 
as  their  proof. 

From  the  beginning  these  plantations  were 
worked  by  indentured  Kanaka  labor  from  the 
South  Sea  Islands.  To  all  intents  and  purposes 
these  ignorant  blacks  were  virtually  slaves.  The 
workmen  of  Australia  started  the  agitation 
against  this  ''slave  trade"  and  eventually  the 
whole  of  the  country  was  lighted  up  by  a  blaze 
of  moral  indignation  over  this  colored  labor. 

Notice  was  given  the  planters  that  after  a  spec- 
ified time  a  white  Australia  policy  would  be  en- 

155 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

forced  and  colored  labor  would  be  abolished.  A 
wail  of  protest  went  up  from  sugar  planters,  and 
'"blackbirders"  who  profited  in  the  procuring  and 
transportation  of  the  Kanaka  laborers,  but  it  was 
of  no  use.  In  due  time  the  South  Sea  Islanders 
were  shipped  back  to  their  homes,  and  the  irate 
planters  appeased  by  a  government  grant  of  six 
pounds  sterling  for  every  ton  of  sugar  they  pro- 
duced thereafter. 

With  many  misgivings  white  laborers  were  put 
into  the  cane  fields  to  take  the  place  of  the 
Kanakas.  And  to  the  surprise  of  a  good  many 
they  were  able  not  only  to  do  the  tropical  work 
but  to  do  more  and  better  work  per  man  than  the 
imported  negroes.  They  were  more  expensive, 
of  course,  but  the  subsidy  took  care  of  this  dif- 
ference. 

It  was  a  great  boon  for  white  Australia. 
**  White  men,  good  strong  Europeans  of  our  own 
color  and  own  religions,  are  what  we  want,"  all 
Australia  said.  *'We  are  going  to  keep  our  race 
pure:  we  are  going  to  keep  Australia  for  our- 
selves.'* 

Little  by  little  this  determination  has  grown 
until  to-day  it  is  the  soul  of  Australia's  national 
life.  From  Premier  Hughes  down  to  my  train 
guard  this  is  a  settled  conviction. 

I  don't  know  which  feels  it  the  deepest — cer- 
tainly it  is  part  of  the  heart  and  mind  of  this 
strange,   bent,   irascible,    hawk-like    figure   who 

156 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

has  been  the  mouthpiece  of  Australia  for  a  half- 
dozen  years. 

In  some  ways  this  man  ** Billy"  Hughes  is  one 
of  the  most  picturesque  and  unusual  characters 
in  the  world.  Coming  to  Australia  from  Wales 
some  twenty-five  years  ago  as  a  consumptive  ex- 
school-teacher  he  was  for  several  years  a  roust- 
about on  sheep  ranches  in  Queensland.  Event- 
ually he  drifted  to  Sydney  where  he  opened  a 
small  bookshop  along  the  wharf.  Soon  he  was 
organizing  the  longshoremen  and  leading  their 
fight  for  better  wages  and  better  working  condi- 
tions. 

Little  by  little  he  worked  his  way  up  in  the 
labor  ranks  and  eventually  injected  himself  into 
New  South  Wales  politics. 

With  the  formation  of  the  Commonwealth  Par- 
liament twenty  years  ago  he  turned  his  brilliant, 
vitriolic  talents  toward  federal  affairs  and  rap- 
idly became  one  of  the  foremost  Labor  party 
leaders. 

In  1914  with  the  political  Labor  party  in  con- 
trol in  five  of  the  six  states,  and  heavily  en- 
trenched in  the  Federal  Parliament,  Hughes  was 
first  in  command  under  Premier  Fisher.  Early 
in  the  war  Fisher  resigned  the  premiership  to 
become  Australian  high  commissioner  in  London, 
and  Hughes  became  premier. 

In  1916  he  made  a  hurried  trip  to  London  and 
returned  convinced   that  Australia  must   adopt 

157 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

conscription.  But  his  attempt  to  push  his  bill 
through  met  with  bitter  opposition  from  a  ma- 
jority of  the  Labor  leaders  and  the  party  was 
split  wide  open.  One  section  followed  Hughes, 
who  now  formed  a  coalition  with  the  Liberal 
party,  retaining  power  and  making  for  himself 
bitter  and  lasting  enemies  of  the  majority  of  his 
old  Labor  associates. 

Each  election  the  Labor  party,  incensed  at  his 
"treachery,"  attempted  to  break  his  power,  but 
with  somewhat  of  the  same  cunning  and  quick 
shift  and  easy  compromise  of  his  fellow  Welsh- 
man, Lloyd  George,  this  strange  little  fighter 
holds  together  his  coalition.  Frail,  with  broken 
health,  tryingly  deaf,  he  is  nevertheless  easily 
the  most  brilliant  and  capable  man  in  Australian 
public  life.  He  trusts  no  one,  has  few  friends,  a 
million  enemies,  yet  he  cuts  and  slashes  his  way 
through  to  the  end — the  master  politician:  a 
striking  contrast  in  personality  to  our  own  soft- 
spoken  lawyer  in  Washington  who  bears  the  same 
name. 

In  his  high  pitched,  rasping,  almost  quarrel- 
some voice  Hughes  briefly  outlined  for  me  just 
where  Australia  stood  in  regard  to  Japanese  ex- 
clusion. We  were  seated  in  his  private  office  in 
the  Parliament  House  in  Melbourne.  A  tiny 
black  telephone  disk  was  clapped  to  his  ear  and  a 
small  six  by  six  inch  box  receiver  on  his  desk  was 
pointed  in  my  direction. 

158 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

**We  must  recognize  absolutely  that  our  sev- 
eral countries  have  certain  fundamental,  vital, 
individual  principles  that  we  can  not  sacrifice, 
compromise,  or  even  open  for  discussion  to  other 
peoples,"  he  explained.  *'The  white  Australia 
policy  is  ours;  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  America's; 
the  freedom  of  the  seas  is  Britain's.  These  are 
outside  the  province  of  any  League  or  Associa- 
tion or  any  international  conference.  It  must 
recognize  the  rights  of  any  nation  to  protect  its 
own  vital  interests." 

His  was  the  voice  of  Australia — of  white  Aus- 
tralia— not  arguing  but  simply  laying  down  cer- 
tain fundamental  religious  dogmas  that  it  would 
fight  for,  die  for,  if  necessary. 

And  strangely  enough  he  and  most  Australians 
look  to  America  for  their  greatest  physical  and 
moral  support  in  this  new  religion. 

**The  same  Pacific  with  its  same  problems  and 
questions  washes  both  our  shores  giving  America 
and  Australia  certain  common  interests,"  he 
went  on  that  day.  "We  rejoice  in  the  launching 
of  each  new  American  battle-ship:  it  is  another 
brick  in  our  citadel  of  defense." 

Somehow  there  is  a  feeling  generally  about  the 
country  that  England  can  not  and  will  not  under- 
stand the  necessity  for  a  white  Australia.  On 
the  tight  little  island  itself  there  have  never  been 
any  color  lines.  Australians  point  out  how  the 
rich  young  Oxford  student  from  India  is  received 

159 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

in  the  best  homes  in  England  as  an  equal — ^yet 
when  he  returns  to  his  own  India  his  pride  is 
trampled  on  and  his  heart  is  broken  by  every 
white  under-official  in  the  Indian  service. 

Englishmen  are  liberal  and  democratic  with 
themselves  in  their  own  country — but  once  out- 
side they  are  Britishers  with  all  the  weight  of  a 
great  far-flung  empire  and  the  'Svhite  man's 
burden"  on  their  shoulders.  And  Australia  rec- 
ognizes this.  She  expects  no  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  her  Australia-for-the-white-man  from 
Downing  Street. 

So  it  is  that  she  is  looking  to  Canada  and  the 
United  States.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  jeal- 
ousy against  the  powerful  America,  but  it  is 
smothered  in  the  belief  that  America  stands 
squarely  between  Australia  and  ambitious  Japan. 

A  score  of  men  throughout  Australia  have  ex- 
plained to  me  how  this  ''menace"  of  Japan  has 
drawn  them  to  America.  **You  could  count  on 
thousands  of  us  enlisting  in  your  armies  if  you 
should  ever  have  trouble  with  Japan,"  I  was  told 
from  one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other. 

This  fear  of  Japanese  aggression  amounts 
almost  to  an  obsession.  Men  who  submitted  the 
same  offer  of  military  assistance  in  a  possible 
war  against  Japan,  would  turn  to  me  in  sincerest 
anxiety  and  ask  if  America  would  help  them  if 
they  should  be  crowded  to  the  wall  by  Japan. 

This  feeling  that  America  better  understands 

160 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

her  Japanese  problem  than  England  ever  can, 
has  severed  more  than  one  of  the  cords  that  bind 
the  great  daughter  of  the  south  to  the  mother 
England.  Yet  to  report  quite  honestly  all  that  I 
found  there  I  must  explain  that  I  discovered  very 
little  desire  to  cut  these  ties  completely. 

Frankly  I  had  expected  that  in  Australia  I 
should  see  the  first  real  evidence  of  the  breaking 
up  of  the  White  British  Empire.  I  had  thought 
that  here  at  the  end  of  the  world  there  would  be 
independence  of  thought  and  action  and  a  demand 
for  full  and  complete  freedom. 

Instead,  I  found  that  except  in  radical  Labor 
circles  and  among  certain  radical  Irish  Sinn 
Feiners,  Australia  is  closely  tied  to  the  apron- 
strings  of  England — tied  sentimentally,  econom- 
ically, nationally.  Many  great  business  enter- 
prises, even  the  great  ranches,  were  financed  in 
London.  And  deeper  than  that,  her  thought  still 
bears  a  pure  British  trade-mark. 

Everywhere  there  was  a  vague,  half-born  idea 
that  by  some  magic  the  empire  would  suffer  a 
transformation  that  would  give  complete  freedom 
of  action  and  an  equal  voice  to  the  individual 
commonwealths  and  yet  retain  unity.  The  do- 
minions will  never  engage  in  another  war  unless 
it  is  their  several,  individual  wishes  to  do  so,  they 
argue — and  yet  when  pressed  as  to  what  their 
attitude  would  be  if  faced  with  another  crisis  like 
that    of   August,    1914,    they    invariably    would 

161 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

answer:  **0f  course  we  must  always  stand  by 
the  empire  when  she  needs  us." 

But  not  so  the  radical  Labor  elements.  They, 
with  the  Sinn  Feiners,  making  up  possibly  fifty 
per  cent,  of  the  Labor  population,  were  frank  in 
their  determination  to  end  all  connection  with  the 
empire. 

And  this  mention  of  the  stand  of  radical  Labor 
takes  us  from  White  Australia  to  Pink  Queens- 
land. And  Pink  Queensland  after  all  does  have  to 
do  with  the  story  of  the  world's  unrest. 

In  the  friendly,  hospitable  but  extremely  aristo- 
cratic Queensland  Club  of  Brisbane,  where  the 
great  ranch  owners  and  bankers  foregather,  they 
told  me  that  real  red  revolution  was  abroad  in 
the  land. 

"All  this  business  of  State  Socialism  is  nothing 
but  the  vanguard  of  a  real  revolution,"  one  earn- 
est gentleman  shouted  at  me  in  frightened  tones. 

In  the  old  Trades  Hall  in  the  same  city  Tim 
Moroney,  head  of  the  Railway  Union,  called  this 
same  State  Socialism  *' cockroach  capitalism." 
**  These  cheap  Labor  politicians  are  just  a  lot  of 
half  penny  office  holders,  afraid  of  their  own 
shadows.    Red!    Ugh  I"  he  grunted. 

For  myself,  I'd  call  this  most  "revolutionary'* 
of  Australia's  six  states  possibly  a  pale,  sickly 
pink.  As  for  being  red,  it  simply  fails  to  make 
good  on  its  color  reputation. 

Two  years  ago  when  the  Prince  of  Wales  en- 

162 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

tered  Queensland  his  party  came  trembling  in 
their  boots.  There  was  serious  fear  that  the  ''red 
raggers,"  or  Bolsheviks,  or  some  low-browed  rad- 
ical laborites,  would  hoot  the  prince  or  bomb  his 
train  or  say  nasty  things  to  him.  Instead,  Jack 
Fihelly,  their  acting  Labor  premier,  wined,  dined 
and  cheered  him — and  then  trailed  his  departing 
train  in  a  'plane  to  say  a  final  good-by. 

In  exactly  the  same  degree  in  everything  else 
does  Queensland  fail  to  hold  up  its  red  reputa- 
tion. Briefly  here  is  what  I  found  in  this  alleged 
radical  state  with  its  sprawling  six  hundred  sev- 
enty thousand  five  hundred  square  miles  and 
seven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants : 

A  Labor  government  firmly  in  power  with 
forty-seven  seats  to  the  combined  opposition's 
twenty-five. 

Seven  great  state  enterprises  being  worked 
fairly  successfully: 

More  than  five  thousand  miles  of  state  owned 
railroads,  stretching  through  little  settled  coun- 
try, operated  at  small  profit : 

A  government  insurance  bureau  that  has  low- 
ered insurance  charges  some  twenty-five  per 
cent. : 

A  state  Court  of  Industrial  Arbitration  that 
unquestionably  has  averted  many  labor  difficul- 
ties and  a  Fair  Rents  Court  that  is  actually  bene- 
fiting the  renter: 

A  general  forty-four-hour  week  and  a  minimum 
163 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

wage  that  at  least  keeps  the  wolf  from  the 
door: 

And  certain  weakness  for  red  tape,  favoritism, 
and  a  degree  of  inefficiency  that  comes  with  all 
government  departments. 

Of  all  these  points  probably  Queensland's  state 
enterprises  are  being  most  closely  watched  by  the 
world.  During  the  past  six  years  that  the  present 
Labor  government  has  been  in  power  the  state 
has  entered  into  seven  lines  of  direct  competition : 
cattle  ranches,  butcher  shops,  railway  refresh- 
ment rooms,  produce  agencies,  sa^vmills,  fish 
shops  and  a  single  hotel.  For  the  past  year  these 
seven  show  a  total  net  profit  to  the  state  of 
94,638  pounds  sterling — about  $425,000  at  the  rate 
of  exchange  at  that  time,  only  one,  the  fish  mar- 
kets showing  a  loss — $46,000  for  the  year. 

The  state  cattle  ranches  are  sixteen  in  number, 
cover  thirty-two  thousand  square  miles,  and  graze 
two  hundred  thousand  head  of  cattle.  For  the 
year  they  showed  a  net  profit  of  $198,000.  The 
state  management  pays  the  same  state  rent  as 
any  private  lease,  but  it  pays  no  income  tax. 

The  fifty  state  butcher  shops — sixteen  in  the 
city  of  Brisbane  and  thirty-four  scattered 
throughout  the  state — returned  a  net  profit  of 
$164,000  for  the  year,  but  infinitely  more  impor- 
tant than  that,  they  kept  the  price  of  meat  down. 
These  state  shops,  with  their  low  prices,  have 
saved  thousands  of  pounds  sterling  to  the  ordi- 
nary consumers.     Their  turn-over  for  the  year 

164 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

amounte'd  to  $2,836,000,  and  they  handled  26,254,- 
893  pounds  of  meat. 

According  to  U.  H.  Austin,  the  non-political 
Commissioner  for  Trade  for  the  state,  the  people 
of  Queensland  have  been  saved  more  than  two 
million  dollars  annually  directly  through  the  state 
enterprises.  My  own  observations  were  that  by 
and  large  they  were  being  run  as  carefully  and 
efficiently  as  the  ordinary  government  bureau. 
At  least  they  were  actually  keeping  prices 
down. 

The  state  railways  were  able  to  show  a  profit 
of  0.77% — a  decrease  over  former  years.  From 
a  financial  point  of  view,  however,  Queensland  is 
overrailroaded,  mth  its  5,469  miles  serving  a  bare 
seven  hundred  thousand  people. 

The  Court  of  Industrial  Arbitration  while  fail- 
ing to  stop  strikes  at  least  has  greatly  decreased 
the  number.  There  are  two  judges,  appointed  for 
seven-year  terms,  and  they  make  their  awards  on 
the  basis  of  a  general  forty-four-hour  week,  and 
a  basic  wage  for  unskilled  work  of  three  pounds 
seventeen  shillings  per  week — about  sixteen  dol- 
lars at  the  present  rate  of  exchange.  The  court 
may  impose  fines  up  to  one  hundred  pounds  and 
six  months  in  jail,  but  the  hold  the  Court  has  over 
Labor  Kes  in  the  fact  that  if  its  decisions  are  not 
obeyed  the  Union  loses  its  standing  in  the  Court 
and  its  wage  award.  Its  function,  after  all,  is 
really  to  get  the  two  factions  together  and  then 
to  deal  fairly  and  squarely  with  the  case. 

165 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

The  Fair  Rents  Court  is  really  doing  business. 
All  flub-dub  and  horse  play  is  hewn  off  and  the 
court  is  an  informal  place  where  the  renter  can 
go  for  protection  against  a  profiteering  landlord. 
The  judge  simply  asks  two  questions — neither 
side  may  be  represented  by  a  lawyer  and  must 
appear  in  person — how  much  does  the  renter  pay 
and  how  much  did  the  property  cost.  If  the  an- 
nual rental  figures  more  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the 
property  cost  then  the  rent  is  actually  brought 
down  to  that  figure:  if  the  rent  is  less  than  ten 
per  cent,  then  it  is  brought  up  to  that  amount. 
That's  all  there  is  to  it — and  it  works. 

All  in  all  it's  only  a  pale,  sickly  pink  Queens- 
land. But  Queensland  labor,  like  the  labor  of  all 
the  rest  of  Australia  is  on  the  move  toward  the 
Left.  In  June,  1921,  the  first  All- Australian  Con- 
gress of  Trade  Unions  was  held  in  Melbourne, 
and  the  three  hundred  delegates  laid  downi  a 
broad,  progressive  policy  that  labor  should  point 
toward. 

This  goal  was  frankly  for  the  ultimate  socializa- 
tion of  industry,  production,  distribution  and  ex- 
change. To  achieve  it  both  industrial  and  parlia- 
mentary machinery  was  to  be  utilized.  To  gain 
efficiency  the  old  craft  organization — trade 
unions — are  to  give  way  to  organization  of  work- 
ers along  lines  of  industry:  that  is,  where  all  the 
workers  in  any  one  industry  wiU  work  in  a  single 
union, 

166 


WHITE  AUSTRALIA 

All  of  which  means  that  Australian  labor  is  out 
to  turn  this  great  southern  continent  into  a  social- 
istic state — to  turn  it  by  use  of  a  political  party 
and  a  tightly  bound  industrial  organization.  If 
it's  revolution,  then  it's  evolutionary  revolution; 
and  if  it's  evolution  it's  revolutionary  evolution. 
You  can  take  your  choice. 

In  the  meantime,  it's  White  Australia  that 
really  counts — White  Australia  that  will  act  as 
an  unfriendly,  echoless  sounding  board  to  the 
eventual  cry  of  the  East  for  racial  equality. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

OUR   OWN   LITTLE  INDLfli 

Before  the  days  of  the  Irish  settlement  I  had 
heard  the  Philippines  called  **Our  Own  Little 
Ireland."  I  preferred  to  call  them  *^Our  Own 
Little  India." 

They  are  distinctly  a  little  India  because,  after 
all,  compared  to  what  England  faces  in  her  India 
our  troubles  in  the  islands  are  very  small.  And 
yet  there  are  troubles  there  for  us — for  the  teach- 
ing of  independence  must  always  and  ever  bring 
a  demand  for  full  independence. 

And  it  is  a  growing  demand.  A  new  generation 
is  being  brought  up  in  the  islands  that  has  been 
taught  Americanism  by  Americans.  We  have  told 
them  of  the  Fourth  of  July — and  they  celebrate 
it.  And  now  they  ask  for  their  own  Glorious 
Fourth. 

Somehow  this  story  of  Independence  and  what 
it  means  to  the  old  and  new  generations  in  the 
islands  was  best  dramatized  for  me  by  an  old 
pagan  ex-head-hunting  Ifagao  and  his  young  son. 

When  I  first  saw  the  old  fellow  he  was  climb- 
ing down  the  ladder  steps  that  led  from  the  un- 
dersized   doorway    of    a    high-roosted    native 

168 


PUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

thatched  hut — climbing  down  like  some  ancient 
cock  from  an  upper-story  perch.  Except  for  a 
loin-cloth — dubbed  a  G-string  in  the  Philippine 
Islands — ^he  was  as  naked  as  the  day  of  his  birth. 
And  he  was  as  full  as  a  tick. 

He  safely  negotiated  the  five-foot  descent  and 
then,  dramatically  stretcliing  out  his  withered 
and  shrunken  arms  and  looking  across  the  nar- 
row valley  and  do^\^l  the  deep  mountainside,  cried 
in  his  native  tongue:  "The  whole  world  is 
drunk!    The  whole  world  is  crazy!'* 

For  hours  he  had  been  squatting  on  his  bare 
heels  with  two  other  ancient  fakirs  mumbling  the 
words,  crooning  the  songs,  making  the  mystic 
passes  of  a  high  pagan  harvest  ceremony — and 
between  times  drinking  deep  and  satisfying 
draughts  from  a  great  earthen  jug  filled  with 
huhud — the  native  brew  from  fermented  rice. 
His  only  worry  was  his  supply  of  huhud — and 
what  his  wife  would  say  to  him  when  he  got  home. 

''The  whole  world  is  drunk!  The  whole  world 
is  crazy!"  he  repeated. 

I  was  thoroughly  fascinated  and  asked  my  in- 
terpreter to  bring  him  over  and  let  me  talk  with 
him.  So  over  he  came  and  squatted  beside  me 
and  we  talked.  His  wrinkled,  leathery  face  wore 
a  friendly  smile  and  his  eyes  twinkled  with  good 
feeling.  For  half  a  century  he  had  been  priest  to 
this  pagan  tribe  of  head-hunters  in  the  Ifagao 
valley  among  the  mountains  of  Northern  Luzon. 

169 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

He  and  his  nine  hundred  thousand  pagan  and 
Moslem  brothers  have  offered  the  most  difficult 
problem  that  the  American  administration  in  the 
Philippines  has  had  to  face.  I  had  come  the  long 
two  hundred  and  fifty-mile  mountain  trip  by 
horseback  from  Bagio  in  order  to  see  just  what 
the  Americanos  had  been  able  to  accomplish 
among  a  tribe  which  is  not  only  backward  but 
savage  and  untouched  at  any  point  by  the  western 
civilization  we  are  so  proud  of. 

''What^s  all  this  independencia  talk  I  hear  so 
much  about?"  I  asked  the  old  fellow,  after  I  had 
complimented  him  on  his  evident  capacity  for 
huhud. 

A  strange  look  came  over  his  face.  His  priest 
game  called  for  him  to  be  the  wisest  man  of  the 
valley  and  he  hesitated  to  admit  his  ignorance. 
But  we  were  white  men  and,  there  being  no  neces- 
sity of  bluff  mth  us,  he  finally  answered:  **I 
don't  know — but  my  son  does.    You  ask  him.*' 

That  afternoon  I  met  the  boy.  He  was  proba- 
bly fifteen  and  was  dressed  in  a  strange  combina- 
tion of  native  bareness  and  American  clothes. 
Below  the  waist  line  he  wore  only  the  **  conven- 
tional" G-string,  but  above  he  sported  an  Ameri- 
can coat  and  a  straw  sailor  hat — the  size  and  con- 
dition of  these  articles  making  it  clear  that  they 
were  legacies  from  some  American  of  grander 
mold.  When  he  was  pointed  out  to  me  as  the  old 
priest's  son  I  went  up  to  him  and  spoke  to  him  in 

170 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

English.  He  answered  me  slowly  and  mth  a 
rather  pleasing  accent.  He  attended  an  American 
school,  he  said,  and  at  one  time  had  had  an  Ameri- 
can teacher,  but  at  present  his  instructor  was  a 
Filipino  from  Manila. 

"When  I  finish  here  I  wish  I  may  go  to  Bagio 
High  School,"  he  said.  "Then  I  wish  to  go  to 
Manila  University  to  study  to  be  a  doctor.  Then 
some  day  I  come  back  here  to  this  valley  to  my 
people  and  teach  them  how  be  clean,  and  healthy 
and  everything.  My  teacher  promised  me  all  that 
if  I  study  hard  and  be  good  student.  So  I  work 
hard.    Next  year  I  go  Bagio." 

"And  how  about  this  independenciaf^'  1  sug- 
gested. 

He  hesitated  a  moment.  Then  he  looked  me 
straight  in  the  eye  and  answered:  "We  want  inde- 
pendence for  our  islands.  We  learn  that  at 
school.    America  has  taught  us  that." 

It  seemed  to  me  I  had  no  need  to  look  further.  I 
had  found  the  magic  I  was  looking  for — and  it 
was  the  magic  that  American  schools  and  Ameri- 
can ideals  and  American  sanitation  and  American 
inspiration  had  planted  among  the  eleven  mil- 
lion people  of  these  enchanted  islands.  The  pass- 
ing generation  had  missed  most  of  it — just  as  this 
ancient  fakir  had  missed  it — but  the  youth  of  the 
land,  the  future  of  the  islands,  had  made  it  a  part 
of  them.  They  knew  what  this  word  independ- 
encia  meant — because  they  knew  the  magic  of 

171 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

American  political  ideals.  We  had  taught  it  to 
them  ourselves. 

This  hill-boy,  Juan,  had  learned  it,  too — and 
he's  the  fellow  we're  interested  in;  he's  the  new 
Filipino:  in  a  few  years  more  he'll  be  running 
the  islands.  He's  distinctly  the  product  of 
twenty  years  of  American  influence.  And,  after 
all,  he's  the  big  consideration  when  it  comes  to 
weighing  the  argument  for  independence.  His 
old  pagan  father,  drinking  his  huhud  and  curing 
ills  by  signs  and  strange  words,  doesn't  matter 
much.  What  we  would  do  to  and  for  this  young 
boy,  who  would  study  modern  medicine  and  lead 
his  tribe  and  his  islands  upward,  is  the  big  test. 

If  one  could  put  down  in  a  single  word  the  most 
priceless  gift  that  America  has  made  to  this  new 
generation  one  would  unhesitatingly  say 
*' schools."  That's  the  password  of  the  Philip- 
pines and  one  hears  it  in  harrios  hidden  in  great 
cocoanut  groves  and  listens  to  its  echo  along  the 
freshly  paved  streets  of  new  cities.  It's  the  heart 
song  of  a  young  nation. 

A  year  ago  there  were  more  than  seventy-five 
thousand  children  turned  away  from  school  doors 
because  there  were  not  rooms  or  teachers  to  care 
for  them.  I  shall  never  forget  seeing  a  barefoot 
mother  bringing  her  seven-year-old  boy  to  a 
home-made  nipa  school  in  the  island  of  Bohol — 
a  thousand  miles  south  of  the  Ifagao  valley  of  my 
hill-boy.    The  room  was  overcrowded  already  and 

172 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

the  teacher  had  accepted  more  pupils  than  the 
regulations  permitted.  But  the  mother  couldn't 
understand  all  these  things  and  when  she  found 
that  her  tears  could  not  get  her  cliild  admitted 
she  wanted  to  pay  his  way  with  her  peso  or  two  of 
savings. 

**I  will  pay — I  will  pay  you  all  I  have,"  she 
cried,  tears  streaming  down  her  cheeks.  *'I  want 
my  boy  to  learn  so  that  he  will  not  always  live  in 
a  hut  and  be  poor.    Please  let  him  go  to  school." 

She  could  not  read  nor  write  and  she  lived  in  a 
tiny  bamboo  thatched  hut,  roosting  on  stilts,  but 
she  wanted  her  boy  to  become  educated  so  that 
he  could  have  a  better  place  in  the  world.  And 
the  same  thing  is  happening  over  all  the  islands — 
except  among  the  non-Cliristian  tribes,  who  are 
taldng  more  slowly  to  education.  It  is  a  glorious 
sign  for  the  future. 

Of  the  one  million  two  hundred  thousand  chil- 
dren of  school  age  in  the  islands,  776,639  are  at- 
tending school — a  voluntary  attendance  of  ap- 
proximately two-thirds  of  the  eligible  children. 
It  is  a  great  record,  but  cold  figures  fail  to  show 
the  priceless  value  of  this  steady  stream  of 
American  ideals  of  life  and  citizenship  flowing 
into  the  million  homes  scattered  about  these 
islands.  It  is  a  new  country  that  is  being  born, 
and  a  new  people.    That  hill-boy  is  typical. 

One  should  really  not  visit  the  Philippines 
until  after  he  has   seen  India   and  Korea   and 

173 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Egypt  and  Indo- China,  and  the  other  examples  of 
outside  rule  clapped  on  native  peoples.  To  see 
others  first  would  make  one  more  tolerant  and 
sympathetic  and  infinitely  more  patient,  and 
decidedly  more  grateful  to  the  big  Americans  who 
have  spent  and  are  even  now  spending  the  best 
years  of  their  lives  in  the  islands  planting  deeply 
American  ideals  and  ideas. 

It's  quite  easy  to  see  the  fundamental  differ- 
ence between  either  British  or  French  or  Japan- 
ese or  German  colonial  rule  and  that  of  American 
control  in  the  Philippines.  It  is  basically  a  ques- 
tion of  the  spirit  that  is  behind  the  rule. 

Is  the  highly  propagandized  *' white  man's 
burden"  shouldered  for  the  benefit  of  Manchester 
cotton  mills,  or  Hamburg  merchants  or  Lyon 
manufacturers,  or  is  it  for  the  benefit  of  the  na- 
tive peoples  themselves? 

This  is  where  America's  supervision  of  the 
Philippines  has  shone  like  a  white  light  in  com- 
parison to  the  efforts  of  the  Old  World  colonizers. 
America's  work  in  the  islands  has  been  guided  by 
one  ideal:  that  which  is  best  for  the  Filipinos. 

Twenty  years  ago  when  William  Howard  Taft, 
with  the  cooperation  of  the  secretary  of  state, 
Philander  E.  Knox,  first  laid  out  the  broad 
scheme  for  American  work  in  the  Philippines,  it 
was  under  the  great  inspiration  of  preparing  the 
islands  for  self-government  and  then  giving  it  to 
them  as  soon  as  they  were  capable  of  taking  care 
of  themselves. 

X74 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

Every  administration  at  Washington  and  every 
governor-general  at  Manila  since  then  has 
worked  along  this  same  general  line.  Carefully, 
patiently,  thoroughly  we  have  planted  this  idea  of 
independence — until  everywhere  about  the  islands 
one  hears  the  word  spoken.  Somehow,  no  matter 
how  you  may  try  to  dodge  the  question,  it  keeps 
popping  up  in  a  thousand  different  guises.  I've 
met  it  on  the  dreamy,  flower-lit  streets  of  Zam- 
boanga;  I've  sat  with  it  a  thousand  miles  north- 
ward in  the  twilight  of  the  gorgeous  days  of  the 
empire  in  front  of  nipa  huts,  while  head-hunters 
swayed  in  their  graceful  dances:  and  I've  enter- 
tained it  in  half  the  clubs  in  Manila. 

And  now  America  talks  seriously  of  her  obli- 
gations to  the  islands. 

I'd  really  like  to  plead  my  hill-boy's  side  of 
this  case,  but  after  all  I'm  a  reporter  and  not  a 
partisan.  All  I  would  do  is  to  put  down  in  black 
and  white  some  basis  for  judgment  and  let  you 
who  read  draw  your  own  conclusions. 

My  hill-boy  interests  me — and  so  do  America's 
national  and  military  necessities  interest  me.  In 
this  Philippine  problem  it  is  not  only  what's  good 
for  the  Filipinos  that  must  be  considered,  but 
what's  good  for  America. 

We'll  need  a  little  historic  basis  to  build  our 
decision  on. 

Two  or  three  years  before  the  World  War  a 
large-sized  scare  blew  our  way  from  Japan.    It 

175 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

wafted  by  without  damage  but,  nevertheless,  cer- 
tain American  military  and  naval  men  were 
greatly  worried.  At  that  time  we  had  less  than 
ten  thousand  American  soldiers  in  the  Philip- 
pines, and  about  ten  thousand  Scout  soldiers — 
Filipinos  commanded  mostly  by  American  offi- 
cers. They  would  have  been  a  nice,  juicy  morsel 
for  Japan  to  gulp  down  in  one  small  gobble. 

America's  battle  fleet — far  less  than  half  its 
present  size — was  cavorting  about  the  blue  At- 
lantic, some  eight  or  nine  thousand  miles  away, 
and  in  the  whole  Pacific  there  wasn't  a  dry  dock 
big  enough  to  hold  one  of  our  dreadnaughts,  or  a 
naval  base  worthy  of  half  the  name.  Our  Pacific 
fleet  consisted  mostly  of  a  brace  of  admirals  and 
some  homesick  "gobs"  and  a  tiny  flock  of  gun- 
boats captured  from  the  Spaniards.  They  would 
have  made  fair  target  practise  for  the  Japanese 
fleet. 

Anyway,  the  American  Army  and  Navy  staffs 
decided  in  those  piping  days  of  1913  that  should 
The  Thing  happen,  our  soldiers  would  concentrate 
on  Corrigador,  the  real  Gibraltar  of  the  Philip- 
pines that  controls  the  mouth  of  Manila  Bay,  with 
Manila  thirty  miles  away.  The  fortress,  pro- 
visioned and  ready  to  withstand  siege  for  six 
mouths  or  more,  could  hold  the  bay  as  a  sort  of 
refuge  for  our  alleged  Pacific  fleet  and  retain  a 
base  for  future  operations.  In  the  meantime  our 
Atlantic  fleet,  without  base  or  even  adequate  coal- 

176 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

ing  facilities,  would  sally  forth  and  attempt  to 
draw  the  wily  Jap  into  open  naval  battle — with 
about  as  much  chance  of  luring  him  out  as  the 
small  boy  has  of  coaxing  the  groundhog  from  his 
safe  retreat. 

Well,  The  Thing  blew  over  and  the  scare  was 
forgotten  and  good  folks  laughed  again  at  all  this 
silly  talk  of  Yellow  Peril — but  the  general  staffs 
of  the  Army  and  Navy  thought  it  was  high  time 
America  got  from  under  this  far-flung  burden 
she  was  carrying  at  arm's  length,  seven  thousand 
miles  away  in  the  Pacific. 

*'The  heel  of  Achilles"  they  called  the  Philip- 
pines around  Washington  those  days.  In  both 
the  political  and  military  inner  circles  the  islands 
suddenly  grew  to  be  recognized  as  our  greatest 
national  weakness.  Our  gravest  dangers  were 
in  the  Atlantic,  where  the  fleet  had  to  be  cen- 
tered, but  with  the  Philippines  hanging  on  a 
string  as  a  tempting  bait,  the  Pacific  assumed 
new  terrors  and  doubts. 

So  the  scheme  was  put  forward  by  certain 
statesmen  and  navy  and  army  men  to  cut  the 
islands  adrift  and  let  them  shift  for  themselves. 
As  long  as  our  flag  flew  over  them  they  were  an 
increasing  source  of  danger — and  an  unnecessary 
and  unremunerative  danger. 

All  this  happened  along  in  1913,  and  as  a  result, 
when  the  new  governor-general  was  sent  over  that 
same  year,  he  went  with  clear  instructions  to 

177 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

liquidate  this  national  deficit  as  soon  as  possible 
by  rushing  through  an  independence  program. 
This  was  evident  from  his  first  move. 

Good  and  true  Americans  who  had  served  long 
and  faithfully  in  the  islands  were  dumped  out  and 
Filipinos  given  their  jobs.  And,  instead  of  exer- 
cising his  full  power  in  matters  of  legislation  and 
control,  the  new  governor-general  chose  to  use 
only  the  friendly  influence  of  his  powerful  office. 

Three  years  later,  in  1916,  came  the  Jones  Bill, 
practically  giving  autonomy  and  self-government 
to  the  islands.  This  was  a  tremendous  move 
toward  full  independence  because,  besides  plac- 
ing more  power  in  the  hands  of  the  Filipinos,  the 
preamble  of  the  law  carried  a  definite  pledge. 
''WHEREAS,  It  is  and  has  always  been  the  pur- 
pose of  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  with- 
draw their  sovereignty  over  the  Philippine 
Islands  and  to  recognize  their  independence  as 
soon  as  a  stable  government  can  be  established.'* 

Then  bang  into  the  fire  of  the  World  War 
dropped  America.  The  Philippines  and  their 
independence  and  the  Yellow  Peril  and  every- 
thing of  the  Pacific  were  forgotten  in  the  first 
great  surge  of  patriotism.  Even  the  islands 
tried  to  do  their  bit,  and  there  was  never  the 
slightest  question  of  their  loyalty  or  their  will- 
ingness to  help  the  United  States. 

With  the  complete  crushing  of  Germany  the 
whole  military  problem  of  America  was  shifted 

178 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

about.  The  Atlantic  was  no  longer  the  sea  of 
menace  and  we  could  turn  our  backs  on  Europe, 
and  for  the  first  time  concentrate  our  gaze  on 
the  Far  East.  We  no  longer  needed  fear  that 
Japan  would  spring  on  us  from  behind  and  sink 
a  dagger  in  our  open  back.  We  could  look  her 
straight  and  fearlessly  in  the  eye  now.  And  we 
could,  as  well,  turn  our  full  attention  to  the  un- 
limited future  commercial  markets  of  the  East. 

So  almost  overnight  these  smiling  islands 
changed  in  the  eyes  of  many  men.  They  were  no 
longer  the  "heel  of  Achilles."  Our  military  and 
naval  men  could  dream  out  their  great  military 
and  naval  bases  here — and  our  commercial  pio- 
neers could  plan  on  the  peaceful  conquest  of  the 
East  with  Manila  as  their  great  commercial  base. 

To  another  school  of  thought  the  growing  im- 
perialistic ambitions  of  Japan  and  her  then 
great  naval  expenditures  only  increased  our  re- 
sponsibilities of  keeping  the  islands  under  the 
American  flag — and  these  men  would  have 
dropped  the  Philippines  not  for  altruistic  reasons 
but  simply  because  they  were  not  worth  the 
danger  we  ran  in  holding  them. 

With  the  securing  of  the  mandate  over  the 
former  German  Marshall  and  Caroline  Islands, 
Japan  lay  directly  in  the  path  of  our  long  trail  to 
the  Philippines — and  it  was  very  evident  that 
for  us  to  hold  them  in  case  of  war  would  involve 
tremendous  and  dangerous  adventures. 

179 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

All  these  are  purely  naval  and  military  wrinkles 
that  the  Washington  Conference  went  a  long  way 
toward  ironing  out.  We  have  pledged  ourselves 
not  to  increase  our  naval  base  at  Manila,  and  the 
war  cloud  has  again  disappeared.  With  a  fair 
settlement  of  the  war-breeding  difficulties  that 
were  rapidly  developing  between  the  United 
States  and  Japan,  the  military  man  must  now  re- 
sign his  concern  over  the  right  or  wrong  strategy 
of  giving  up  the  islands. 

The  distinctly  moral  issue  still  remains,  how- 
ever— and  that  has  to  do  with  my  hill-boy.  To 
study  his  side  of  the  case  we  must  take  a  quick 
look  at  the  present  internal  conditions. 

For  the  past  six  years  the  islands  have  been 
regulated  by  the  provisions  of  the  Jones  Bill — ■ 
seriously  referred  to  by  the  Filipinos  as  Bill 
Jones.  Under  this  law  the  islands  are  governed 
by  the  Philippine  Legislature,  consisting  of  an 
upper  house  of  twenty-four  senators,  elected  for 
six-year  terms,  and  a  lower  house  of  ninety  mem- 
bers, elected  for  three  years.  High  executive 
powers  of  appointment  and  veto  are  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  governor-general,  appointed  by  the 
president  of  the  United  States.  The  different 
provinces,  corresponding  to  American  states, 
have  locally  elected  governors ;  while  the  districts 
inhabited  by  the  nine  hundred  thousand-odd  non- 
Christian  tribes  are  controlled  by  the  governors 
appointed  by  the  governor-general. 

180 


OUE  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

The  power  of  the  governor-general,  under  the 
Jones  Law,  is  tremendous,  but  Francis  Burton 
Harrison,  the  incumbent  under  the  Wilson  admin- 
istration, exercised  this  power  only  in  a  most 
friendly  way.  Both  in  his  appointments  and  in 
his  vetoes  he  bent  to  the  wishes  of  the  Filipino 
leaders.  He  accomplished  his  ends  more  through 
the  influence  of  his  office  than  through  any  at- 
tempt to  use  the  great  power  that  was  his. 

To  all  intents  and  purposes  the  Filipinos  are 
self-governing.  Most  of  the  work  and  responsi- 
bility of  running  the  eleven  million  people  on  the 
hundreds  of  islands  that  sprinkle  this  part  of 
the  Pacific  are  in  the  hands  of  natives.  There 
are  still  a  few  score  of  American  officials,  but 
they  are  retained  because  the  Filipinos  them- 
selves want  them  to  remain.  Of  the  different 
government  bureaus  only  those  of  Education, 
Audit,  Finance,  and  Science  are  still  headed  by 
Americans. 

Probably  the  worst  error  in  the  present  Phil- 
ippine scheme  of  government  is  the  one-party 
system.  There  are  two  parties  on  paper  but,  as 
it  works  out,  there  is  actually  only  one.  The  oppo- 
sition to  the  strong,  victorious  Nationalist  party 
is  so  slight  that  it  can  hardly  be  called  real  opposi- 
tion. Such  as  there  is  centers  in  an  unhappy 
Democracia,  which  has  only  one  of  the  twenty- 
four  senators,  and  but  four  of  the  ninety  repre- 
sentatives. 

181 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Not  only  is  this  a  naturally  unhealthy  state  of 
party  affairs  but  the  whole  country  is  run, 
dominated,  and  controlled  by  this  single  Nation- 
alist party;  the  real  government  is  in  the  hands 
of  its  party  caucus  and  its  conventions. 

To  all  intent  and  purpose  the  Philippine  gov- 
ernment to-day  is  directed  and  dominated  by  two 
powerful  opposing  figures,  who  are  allied  within 
one  political  party  for  a  single  cause — the  peace- 
ful and  successful  solution  of  the  independence 
problem.  These  two  figures  who  differ  so  greatly 
in  thought  and  temperament  and  psychology  are 
Manuel  L.  Quezon,  President  of  the  Philippine 
Senate,  and  Segio  Osmena,  Speaker  of  the  House 
of  Representatives. 

For  practical  purposes  and  national  interests 
they  are  allied  intimately  and  securely,  but  the 
minute  that  the  independence  proposition  is  set- 
tled, they  will  begin  a  battle  for  individual  su- 
premacy. Behind  each  is  a  definite  faction,  and  a 
pronounced  school  of  thought  that  can  work  in 
harmony  with  the  other  only  when  held  by  some 
great  magnet  of  universal  desire.  To  the  public 
the  dominating  Nationalist  party  presents  a  uni- 
fied front,  but  within  the  inner  circles  there  is 
really  a  growing  split. 

Once  the  independence  question  is  solved,  there 
will  be  immediate  and  violent  cleavage — if  this 
does  not  happen  even  before  self-government  is 
gained.     The   young,    progressive,   liberal,    and 

182 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

pro-American  elements  will  follow  Quezon,  while 
the  conservative,  older  and  financial  elements 
will  back  Osmena.  But  it  will  also  be  deeper  and 
more  fundamental  than  all  that :  it  mil  be  a  battle 
between  the  East  and  the  West — Orientalism 
against  western  ideals. 

Quezon,  temperamental,  brilliant,  frank,  senti- 
mental, a  man  of  quick  and  generous  impulses, 
but  often  wrong,  reflects  American  and  western 
ideas  better  than  any  other  Filipino  in  the  islands. 
With  a  background  of  many  years  in  America,  as 
the  resident  commissioner,  he  has  become  thor- 
oughly westernized. 

At  the  other  extreme  is  Osmena — Speaker  of 
the  House — unfathomable,  cautious,  analytical,  a 
master  politician  who  is  an  absolute  Oriental  in 
thought  and  action.  As  against  Quezon's  dash- 
ing, violent,  open  manner,  Osmena  is  silent,  self- 
effacing,  cunning.  Quezon,  the  adventurer, 
breaks  trails  without  fear,  while  Osmena  never 
ventures  a  single  step  without  knowing  exactly 
where  his  foot  is  going  to  land. 

Already  there  has  been  a  split  between  these 
two  groups.  And  once  the  armistice  for  the  cause 
of  independence  is  ended,  then  the  forces  will 
form  naturally  into  opposing  camps.  Quezon,  in 
tune  with  the  most  liberal  ideas  of  the  world,  will 
open  the  fight  with  such  modest  liberal  demands 
as  equal  suffrage  for  w^omen,  and  equal  rights 
in  the  divorce  courts.  He  vdW  carry  this  on 
through  all  shades  of  progressive  ideas. 

183 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

But  the  great  fight  that  is  coming  some  day  is 
one  of  keeping  the  islands  on  the  side  of  the  West 
and  not  the  Orient.  A  thousand  million  black, 
bro^\Ti  and  yellow  peoples  along  the  shores  of  Asia 
find  themselves  bound  more  or  less  together  by 
geographic  proximity,  color,  and  the  necessity  for 
defense  against  western  aggression.  With  all  of 
these — Japan,  China,  India  and  the  Malay  Islands 
— there  is  also  one  basic  religion,  which  is  dis- 
tinctly non-Christian.  Of  the  billion  on  this  side 
of  the  world  only  the  Filipinos  are  allied  with 
the  West  in  religion  and  ideals. 

Some  day,  if  this  East  vs.  West  question  be- 
comes acute,  it  will  be  of  priceless  value  to  have  a 
friendly  nation  in  the  great  East  inspired  by  our 
o^vn  ideals  ready  and  willing  to  stand  by  the  West. 

This  point  is  well  worth  deep  study.  A  friendly 
Filipino  nation  would  be  worth  its  weight  in  gold 
on  The  Day  when  the  test  comes. 

Military  men  are  apt  to  think  too  much  in  terms 
of  guns  and  ships.  It  is  a  grievous  mistake — and 
if  we  fail  to  keep  our  fingers  on  the  heart  pulse 
of  these  islands  some  day  we  shall  pay  for  the 
error. 

My  hill-boy  to-day  is  close  to  America.  So  long 
as  his  hopes  are  not  bruised  too  badly  or  his 
sense  of  the  justice  of  America  lost,  he  will 
believe  in  America  and  the  West  against  the 
Oriental  East.    Quezon  stands  out  as  his  leader. 

Unquestionably  it  is  this  red-hot,  young,  West- 

184 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

ern-inspired  firebrand,  Manuel  Quezon,  who  will 
keep  the  islands  looking  to  America  and  the  West. 
Some  months  have  passed  now  since  I  had  my  last 
talk  with  him,  but  I'm  sure  nothing  has  changed 
— except  an  even  stronger  determination  for  self- 
government. 

''The  Filipinos  are  loyal,  grateful,  and  affec- 
tionate to  America  for  all  that  she  has  done  for 
us,"  he  said  to  me.  ''We  are  ready  to  make  any 
reasonable  arrangements  with  America  and  we 
are  only  too  glad  to  carry  out  any  reasonable 
wishes  of  America. 

' '  Of  course  we  want  independence  now,  but  any 
unavoidable  delay  resulting  from  the  present  un- 
settled condition  of  the  world,  and  the  necessity 
of  fixing  future  international  relations  of  the 
Philippines,  would  be  understood  by  us  and  would 
cause  no  resentment  on  the  part  of  our  people  if 
in  the  meantime,  the  spirit  of  the  present  Jones 
law  be  carried  out. 

"We  do  not  want  any  checking  of  the  steady 
flow  of  independence.  We  would  gladly  consent 
to  America  holding  permanent  military  bases 
here  of  any  kind.  In  fact  we  desire  that.  Natur- 
ally we  want  the  protection  that  an  American 
fleet  whose  base  is  here,  would  give  us.  And  we 
want  America  to  make  Manila  a  great  commercial 
base  for  her  future  eastern  trade." 

"And  about  the  future  of  American  citizens 
and  American  business  in  the  islands?"  I  asked. 

185 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

*' There  will  never  be  the  slightest  discrimina- 
tion against  American  citizens  and  American 
business.  They  will  have  every  right  and  every 
protection  we  Filipinos  have.  We  want  free  re- 
ciprocal trade,  and  in  every  way  the  fullest, 
freest,  closest  connection  between  our  countries. 
We  want  America  always  to  be  our  big  brother.** 

I  would  inject  one  observation  of  my  own:  My 
hill-boy  and  the  great  majority  of  the  educated, 
intelligent  Filipinos  will  be  quite  content  if  inde- 
pendence comes  to  the  islands  any  time  within  the 
next  few  years.  So  long  as  there  is  no  turning 
back  in  the  program  of  independence  that  the 
United  States  has  been  following  for  the  last 
eight  years  there  will  be  no  trouble. 

The  one  chance  of  a  deep  misunderstanding 
would  come  from  a  complete  reversal  in  the  pres- 
ent idea  of  American  supervision.  A  decided 
choking  of  independence  would  bring  disastrous 
and  terrible  results.  And  any  attempt  to  turn 
back  the  clock  and  take  away  liberties  and  powers 
already  held  by  the  islanders  might  easily  bring 
open  revolt. 

These  coming  days  will  be  trying  ones  for  the 
islands,  but  a  degree  of  patience  must  be  antici- 
pated from  all  sides.  The  new  governor-general. 
General  Wood,  is  out  of  sympathy  with  the  idea 
of  full  and  immediate  self-government,  but  it  is 
reasonable  to  expect  that  he  will  be  moderate  in 
both  his  demands  and  his  actions. 

186 


OUR  OWN  LITTLE  INDIA 

Time,  after  all,  is  not  the  essential  thing  in  the 
Philippine  question.  The  essential  thing  is  that 
the  steady  flow  of  independence  continue  and 
eventually  end  in  a  close  and  friendly  partnership 
between  the  two  countries. 

Many  intelligent  Filipinos  do  not  want  America 
to  cut  completely  loose  from  the  islands.  They 
want  eventual  independence  but  they  want  a  con- 
tinuation of  America's  help  and  protection  and 
they  are  ready  to  make  any  *' reasonable  arrange- 
ments" with  America  to  gain  it.  They  are  even 
willing  that  America  should  hold  some  general 
supervision  over  them,  comparable  to  the  powers 
of  the  Piatt  Amendment  over  Cuba. 

After  all,  the  Philippine  question  is  not  a  cold, 
dead  proposition  that  can  be  solved  by  a  yardstick 
and  an  engineer's  rule.  There  are  other  impor- 
tant things  to  measure  besides  military  expe- 
diency or  even  what  would  be  safest  and  easiest 
for  America. 

We  must  be  true  to  our  own  fine  ideals  of  the 
rights  of  other  peoples,  and  we  must  be  true  to 
the  American  ideal  this  hill-boy  of  mine  has  built 
up  in  his  owti  heart.  If  we  must  deny  him  inde- 
pendence we  must,  for  our  good,  be  square  mth 
the  reason  why.  There  must  be  no  wallowing  in 
cheap  sentimentality — we  have  had  enough  of  that 
in  such  false  phrases  as  ''the  white  man's  bur- 
den."   Let  us  at  least  be  fair  with  ourselves. 

One  of  the  wisest  of  the  American  colony  in 
187 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Manila,  and  one  of  the  few  Americans  there  who 
was  inclined  to  view  the  cry  for  immediate  self- 
government  with  any  sjnupathy,  seemed  to  put  it 
all  in  a  nutshell  for  me  just  before  I  left. 

*' There's  no  question  but  that  it  would  be  far 
better  for  the  Filipinos  to  continue  for  another 
generation  under  our  benevolent  supervision  and 
protection,  but  if  they  want  full  independence  we 
must  give  it  to  them.  And  we  must  do  more  than 
give  them  independence :  we  must  announce  to  the 
world  that  they  are  under  our  protection.  That's 
what  an  American  father  does  for  his  daughter 
even  when  she  takes  another  name.  We  can  do 
no  less." 

He  was  thinking  of  the  new  generation  of 
these  islands — the  men  and  women  and  the  boys 
and  girls  who  owe  their  very  dream  of  independ- 
ence to  America.  He  was  thinking  of  my  hill-boy 
and  a  million  others.  He  wasn  't  afraid  to  be  fair 
to  the  other  fellow — even  if  he  is  only  the  little 
brown  brother  of  the  islands. 


CHAPTER  IX 

WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI  ? 

Roughly  it  is  ten  thousand  miles  from  the 
Philippine  Islands  to  the  tiny  Black  Republic  of 
Haiti — or  rather  to  what  was  the  tiny  Black 
Republic  of  Haiti.  Geographically  and  racially 
they  are  that  far  apart,  but  when  it  comes  to  a 
discussion  of  America's  ** white  man's  burden" 
we  must  pull  them  close  together  and  see  what 
we  may  reasonably  hope  to  do  in  one  by  what 
we  have  actually  accomplished  in  the  other. 

I  often  think  that  Shakespere's  fine  old  idea 
about  **a  rose  would  be  as  sweet  by  any  other 
name"  might  well  be  reversed  and  twisted  to  in- 
clude a  nation's  expansion — * 'imperialism  would 
be  as  foul  by  any  other  name." 

It's  soothing  and  insidious,  this  whole  white 
man's  business — when  we  do  it  ourselves.  It's 
the  other  fellow  who  is  always  the  conqueror  and 
the  aggressor  and  the  imperialist.  It's  never 
ourselves — not  by  those  names,  at  least. 

And  so  it  might  be  profitable  to  stop  a  moment 
and  consider  just  whose  country  Haiti  is.  And  to 
ask  ourselves  just  what  business  we  have  there. 

189 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

I  asked  a  rather  fine  type  of  Haitian  to  tell  me 
all  about  it — what  we  had  done  and  what  we 
needed  to  do. 

**How  is  that  expression  of  yours?"  He 
turned  to  me.  ** Unscrambling  eggs,  that's  it. 
Well,  that's  what  America  must  do  here  now — 
unscramble  the  Haitian  eggs  that  have  been 
broken  during  six  and  a  half  years  of  your  occu- 
pation." 

We  were  sitting  on  the  broad  corridor  of  the 
Haitian  Club  in  the  northern  part  of  Cape  Hai- 
tian. My  host  was  a  cultured  elderly  member 
of  the  highest  type  of  the  Haitian  elite — one  of 
the  five  per  cent.,  mostly  mulatto,  who  have  ruled 
and  misruled  the  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  illiterate, 
ignorant  black  natives  for  the  one  hundred  and 
eighteen  years  that  Haiti  has  been  a  republic — 
or  rather  the  one  hundred  and  twelve  years  that 
preceded  the  American  entry. 

He  was  known  more  or  less  unfavorably  among 
his  co-elite  because  he  was  classed  as  pro-Occu- 
pation. He  w^as  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  few 
educated  Haitians  in  that  part  of  the  country 
favorable  to  the  American  intervention.  I  had 
expected  that  he  would  *' orate"  on  the  glories  of 
what  America  has  done  in  her  six  years  there — 
possibly,  I  thought,  there  might  be  a  word  or  two 
of  criticism  about  the  color  question,  but  nothing 
more  than  that. 

Instead,  what  I  really  found  when  I  penetrated 
his  crust  of  hesitancy  and  fear,  was  a  gentle  man 

190 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

heartbroken  for  his  race,  grief-stricken  for  his 
country,  disconsolate  for  his  liberties.  He  was 
not  a  politician  and  basically  he  had  only  the  kind- 
est and  the  most  generous  feelings  for  things 
American.  He  had  been  referred  to  me  as  a 
friendly  Haitian  who  would  tell  me  the  truth. 
After  two  hours  of  frank  conversation  I  could 
find  no  reason  to  distrust  his  sentiments  nor  any 
evidence  to  disprove  his  words. 

**It  is  true  that  Haiti  was  in  difficult  and  des- 
perate straits  when  America  first  landed  her 
troops  July,  1915,"  he  spoke  in  a  low  passionless 
voice.  ''During  the  four  years  that  immediately 
preceded,  we  had  five  changes  in  presidents.  We 
had  drifted  into  revolutionary  habits  and  only 
some  strong  dictator  could  have  saved  us  from 
ourselves.  In  times  past  we  had  had  a  number  of 
strong  men  who  had  been  able  to  hold  the  country 
in  peace  and  it  was  only  reasonable  to  expect 
that  out  of  this  maelstrom  of  revolution  some 
powerful  Haitian,  strong  enough  to  have  brought 
peace  and  quiet  to  Haiti,  would  have  emerged. 

* '  But  we  were  not  given  the  opportunity  to  find 
him.  Those  tragic  events  that  led  up  to  the  vio- 
lation of  the  French  Legation,  where  President 
Sam  had  found  asylum  after  ordering  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  of  his  political  enemies  killed  in 
their  prison  cells,  brought  a  small  Legation  guard 
of  marines  from  the  French  cruiser  in  Port  au 
Prince.  Then  American  marines  landed  by  the 
hundreds,  here  in  Cape  Haitian  and  other  ports. 

191 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

**"We  welcomed  them.  We  knew  they  would 
give  our  cities  a  guarantee  of  peace  and  protec- 
tion while  a  new  government  was  establishing 
itself  in  Port  au  Prince.  We  opened  up  our  clubs 
and  our  homes  to  them.  Everybody  was  friendly 
and  hospitable. 

**Then  slowly  they  dug  deeper  and  deeper  into 
our  country.  They  left  the  cities  and  went  out 
into  the  country  districts  looking  for  trouble — 
and  of  course  they  found  it,  in  small  fights  with 
ragged,  poorly  armed  revolutionists.  We  didn't 
mind  that;  they  were  still  our  guests  and  they 
were  stiU  in  our  clubs  and  homes. 

**And  then  things  slowly  began  to  change.  Lit- 
tle by  little  the  officers  brought  down  their  fam- 
ilies with  their  American  color  prejudices — and 
we  are  African  negroes.  We  are  proud  of  it,  too. 
and  we  were  proud  beyond  words  of  this  little 
country  of  ours.  We  were  brought  here  in  slave 
ships,  and  in  the  face  of  a  white  world  supremacy 
we  won  our  freedom. 

*'This  is  something  that  so  few  Americans  here 
seem  to  care  to  understand:  how,  for  more  than 
a  century,  we  had  kept  this  little  country  our 
own — the  Black  Republic.  True,  we  had  ruled  it 
inefficiently  and  the  civilization  and  culture  of 
our  two  million  common  people  had  been  pitiably 
low — but,  after  all,  it  was  ours.  In  those  one  hun- 
dred and  eighteen  years  we  had  twenty-seven 
presidents,  many  of  whom  rode  into  power  on 

192 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

revolutions.  But  in  all  those  years  and  all  those 
violent  changes  of  government  no  American  ever 
was  killed,  and  what  little  American  property 
was  damaged  was  generously  paid  for. 

^'AVith  the  coming  of  Americans  strict  color 
lines  were  draA\ni ;  our  feelings  were  trampled  on ; 
our  hearts — our  spirits — were  broken.  Unfor- 
tunately fully  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  Occu- 
pation are  from  the  southern  portions  of  the 
United  States  and  these  people  came  with  their 
deep  color  prejudices.  They  handled  us  as  though 
we  were  American  negroes  in  their  own  states. 
And  many  of  our  elite  here  are  cultured  people 
who  have  been  educated  in  Europe.  We  were 
treated  like  negro  cotton  workers  on  a  Georgia 
plantation." 

I  had  to  question  him  to  get  the  rest  of  his 
story.  I  asked  him  about  the  cacos — who  are 
either  bandits  or  patriots  according  to  your  point 
of  view — and  about  the  corvee  system  of  road 
making  that  apparently  brought  on  the  revolt  of 
three  years  ago.  He  explained  how  the  orders 
went  out  for  miracles  in  roads:  difficult  moun- 
tain roads,  that  were  primarily  military  roads 
necessary  for  military  motor  transport,  to  be  built 
within  impossible  time  limits. 

**You  see,  early  in  the  occupation  a  gendarm- 
erie was  established  that  resembled  the  Philip- 
pine constabulary,"  he  went  on.  ''The  higher 
officers  were  all  regular  marine  officers  but  the 

193 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

lieutenants  and  captains  were  non-commissioned 
officers  from  the  enlisted  men  of  the  marines. 
These  young  men  were  sent  out  to  districts  with 
practically  unlimited  power.  Some  of  them  were 
very  fine  and  some  of  them  were  very  bad. 

*'When  the  road-building  orders  went  out  they 
revived  an  old  corvee  law  that  compelled  the 
country  people  to  work  a  certain  number  of  days 
each  year  on  their  community  roads.  But  some 
of  the  gendarmerie  officers  abused  this  terribly. 
Men  were  worked  for  weeks  at  a  time  and  even 
sent  out  of  their  districts  without  pay  and  worked 
in  gangs  with  armed  guards  over  them  like  con- 
vict labor. 

''This  brought  on  the  real  caco  outbreak  and 
the  complete  subjugation  of  our  country.  To-day 
we  have  nothing  left  but  a  mockery  of  sover- 
eignty. The  1915  Treaty  that  was  forced  on  us 
gives  American  Treaty  officials  control  of  our 
customs ;  an  American  financial  adviser  virtually 
commands  our  finances;  American  marines 
dominate  us  and  martial  law  grips  us.  Every- 
where there  is  distrust,  fear  and  blind  hate. ' ' 

''And  is  it  too  late — can  the  eggs  be  unscram- 
bled?"   I  questioned. 

"It  will  be  difficult  but  it  isn't  too  late,"  he 
answered.  "First  of  all,  withdraw  the  military. 
Guantanamo  is  only  twenty-four  hours  away. 
End  the  distasteful  martial  law.  Send  us  a  big 
fine  American  head  who  will  do  for  us  what  your 

194 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

Mr.  Taft  did  for  the  Philippines.  Let  him  have 
charge  of  the  whole  occupation  and  let  him  make 
the  Americans  here  treat  us  as  equals.  If  the 
'nigger  haters'  insist  on  their  color  prejudice  let 
them  be  replaced  by  other  men. 

**We  who  really  know  what  America  can  do 
and  how  fine  she  really  is,  want  your  help — but 
we  don't  want  to  be  bullied  by  you.  We  don't 
want  to  have  our  country  taken  away  from  us  so 
that  all  we  have  left  is  a  flag  to  play  with.  We 
just  want  you  to  remember  whose  country  this 
is." 

And  this  from  one  of  the  most  ardent  pro-Occu- 
pation men  in  Haiti.  Others  I  talked  with  said 
with  great  bitterness  that  they  wanted  us  to  get 
out  and  stay  out ;  some  of  these  were  only  dream- 
ing of  getting  back  their  old  government  grafts 
and  again  dominating  the  ninety-five  per  cent. 

After  all,  it's  an  unsatisfactory  business  to  look 
in  on  civilization  while  it  is  being  bom.  It's  like 
any  other  birth — it  is  painful  and  not  nice.  Take 
the  Philippines  for  example. 

Some  twenty  years  ago  in  the  glorious  old  days 
of  the  Empire  they  used  to  sing  a  song  over  there 
that  went  something  like  this : 

Damn,  damn,  damn  the  Filipinos, 
Pock-marked,  bandy-legged  Ladrones, 
Underneath  the  starry  flag 
We'll  civilize  'em  with  a  Krag — 
Oh,  return  us  to  our  o\vn  beloved  homes  I 
195 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

It  was  a  song  of  happy  warriors  and  their  little 
browTi  brothers — and  it  was  a  point  of  view  that 
all  booted  and  spurred  men  in  every  corner  and 
far-away  valley  of  the  world  have.  There  in 
those  smiling  islands  it  was  softened  and  human- 
ized by  other  young  white  men — youthful  school- 
teachers and  administrators  coming  out  from  a 
provincial,  generous  America  with  the  great 
words  of  Washington  and  Lincoln  on  their  lips. 
But  even  these  gentle  civilians  could  not  stop  all 
the  malpractise  of  the  water  cure  and  other 
heroic  treatments. 

Here  in  these  kindly  states  ignorant  in  those 
days  of  even  the  word  imperialism  there  was  a 
deep  resentment  in  many  quarters,  and  the  crush- 
ing of  the  insurrection  movement  and  the  military 
rule  in  the  islands  came  near  being  a  national 
political  issue.  But  we  kept  on  with  our  water 
cures  and  our  school-teachers  and  our  new  roads, 
and  then  came  William  Howard  Taft  with  a  great, 
simple  plan  of  helping  the  Filipinos,  of  educating 
them  as  quickly  as  possible  for  self-government. 

And  so  out  of  those  schools  that  thousands  of 
fine  American  youths  built,  and  down  those  splen- 
did highways  that  American  engineers  laid  out, 
comes  marching  what  is  little  less  than  a  new  na- 
tion. The  days  of  the  Krag  and  its  civilizing 
influence  are  passed  and  forgotten — and  now 
American-educated,  American-inspired  Filipinos 
quote  our  own  words  to  us  that  have  to  do  with 

196 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

liberty  and  freedom  and  independence.  And  that 
itself  is  the  great  proof  that  America  has  accom- 
plished miracles  in  her  one  great  chance. 

Now  I  didn't  hear  any  United  States  Marine 
sing  that  old  Filipino  soldier  song  down  in  Haiti. 
Maybe  they  don't  even  know  the  words — but  they 
do  know  the  tune  because  it's  a  universal  tune. 
Spanish  conquistadores  sang  it,  French  adven- 
turers hummed  it,  gallant  Portuguese  sailormen 
braving  unknown  seas  recalled  it,  British  empire 
builders  made  it  carry  their  white-man 's-burdeii 
song;  and  now  for  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century 
Americans  have  sung  it  from  the  Order  of  the 
Carabao  dinners  in  "Washington  to  the  fever  laden 
swamps  of  Nicaragua.  It  has  a  lilt  and  a  swing  to 
it;  it's  a  fascinating,  alluring  song;  it  lulls  you 
and  charms  you ;  it  deadens  your  senses ;  it 's  the 
hardest  song  in  the  world  to  resist;  it's  the  song 
of  white  men  winning  a  world. 

All  of  which  is  rather  a  roundabout  way  of  say- 
ing that  without  a  background  of  the  wonder 
things  that  America  had  been  able  to  accomplish 
in  the  Philippines  and  Porto  Rico  and  to  a  cer- 
tain degree  in  Cuba,  the  observer  with  sensitive 
moral  values  might  be  shocked  at  what  he  would 
find  or  would  fail  to  find  in  a  first-hand  investi- 
gation of  tiny  Haiti  after  six  and  one-half  years 
of  American  occupation  and  American  assistance. 
He  might  be  quite  as  shocked  as  he  would  have 
been  had  be  gone  into  the  ''insurrecto"  country 

197 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

of  North  Luzon  above  Manila  say  two  decades 
ago  when  the  civilizing-Avith-a-Krag  culture  was 
in  full  bloom. 

Those  were  the  days  of  the  labor  pains  that 
preceded  the  birth  of  the  new  Philippines.  And 
these  are  days  now  of  the  trying  labor  pains  for 
Haiti. 

If  one  wished  to  be  very  gay  he  might  ask  at 
this  juncture  "Who  is  the  father?"  In  one  form 
or  another  this  question  has  been  asked  for  a  half- 
dozen  years  by  certain  sensitive  and  inquisitive 
Americans. 

Well,  just  who  is  responsible  for  the  Haitian 
scramble?  Is  it  the  State  Department  at  Wash- 
ington?— the  Marine  Corps? — American  foreign 
banks? — American  foreign  business? — who  is  this 
particular  gentleman  behind  the  wood-pile? 

I  confess  that  I  haven't  been  able  to  find  out — 
unless  I  may  be  permitted  to  draw  a  composite 
picture  of  a  number  of  villains.  If  so  I  would 
make  up  this  composite  picture  out  of  about  the 
following  per  cent : 

State  Dept.  Monroe  Doctrine  Obsession 15% 

State  Dept.  Protection  Panama  Canal  Ob- 
session    15% 

Commercial  and  Banking  Imperialism 20% 

White-man 's-burden    Obsession 15% 

Marines  Spoiling  for  a  Fight 10% 

Just  plain  bungling 25% 


100% 
198 


[WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

Now  there  was  some  nasty  local  trouble  in 
Haiti — but  it  distinctly  had  to  do  with  the 
Haitians.  No  foreign  lives  and  no  foreign  proper- 
ties were  in  grave  danger.  There  was  unrest  that 
interfered  with  business  and  profits,  but  it  is 
quite  safe  to  say  that  in  a  century  of  Haitian 
revolutions  there  had  not  been  as  many  Haitians 
killed  or  as  much  property  damage  as  the  losses 
in  one  ordinary  day  on  any  fairly  active  front 
during  the  World  War. 

During  those  summer  days  of  1915  Germany 
was  fairly  busy  invading  Northern  France,  while 
France  and  England  likemse  had  their  hands 
full  entertaining  the  German  troops.  American 
banking  interests  deep  in  tiny  Haitian  railroads 
and  banking  needed  but  little  imagination  to 
figure  out  great  commercial  opportunities  for 
American  capital.  Uuder-secretaries  and  sub- 
secretaries  around  the  State  Department,  admir- 
als and  marine  major  generals  around  the  Navy 
Department;  generals  and  staff  colonels  around 
the  Army  Department,  all  obsessed  mth  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  idea  and  equally  under  the  spell  of 
the  ''necessary  for  the  defense  of  the  Canal" 
propagandists — finally  got  their  chance  when  on 
July  28,  1915,  the  mob  broke  into  the  French  Le- 
gation, brought  forth  the  then  president,  oper- 
ated crudely  but  effectively  on  him  and  dragged 
what  was  once  Monsieur  Jean  Vilburn  Guillaune 
Sam  through  the  streets  of  Port  au  Prince. 

199 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OP  THE  EAST 

William  Jennings  Bryan,  at  that  time  secretary 
of  state,  apparently  was  converted  to  the  idea  of 
intervention.  He  in  turn  convinced  President  Wil- 
son. And,  as  I  have  intimated,  everybody,  includ- 
ing two  or  three  war-ships  full  of  marines,  were 
on  the  bit  and  rearing  to  go.  This  was  and  is  the 
business  of  the  marines — to  be  the  **first  to 
fight"  and  the  last  to  quit.  There  are  no  better 
soldiers  in  the  world — but  they  are  soldiers  and 
not  administrators  or  school-teachers  or  mission- 
aries. 

The  rest  is  unimportant  as  to  detail.  Briefly, 
in  1915  we  forced  through  a  treaty  that  to  all 
intent  and  purpose  gave  us  the  government.  The 
figureheads  in  the  hollow  office  of  president 
became  a  fairly  easy  tool  in  the  hands  of  the 
American  military.  A  bitter  personal  animosity 
between  the  president  and  the  American  financial 
adviser  led  to  the  infrequent  use  of  certain  ex- 
ecutive powers  of  obstruction  but  on  the  whole  the 
present  incumbent  has  been  like  clay  in  the  hands 
of  a  sculptor.  Marines,  with  their  martial  law,  a 
native  gendarmerie  officered  and  entirely  con- 
trolled by  marine  officers  and  non-coms,  an  ab- 
solute control  of  all  government  finances  through 
the  collection  and  disbursement  of  custom 
revenues,  gave  us  a  ninety  per  cent,  domination 
of  the  country. 

Some  of  the  things  we  have  done  during  these 
six  and  one-half  years  have  been  very  foolish  and 

200 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

very  stupid;  we  have  assumed  the  role  of  con- 
querors— we  have  often  been  cruel  and  unreason- 
able— ^w'e  have  often  been  inefficient  and  ineffec- 
tive. Other  things  we  have  done  have  been  very 
wise  and  very  fine:  we  have  stopped  revolution 
and  brought  a  physical  peace — we  have  built  a 
few  roads — ^we  have  cleaned  up  scores  of  cities 
and  tremendously  improved  sanitation — ^we  have 
honestly  and  efficiently  collected  custom  revenue 
and  done  away  with  government  graft.  Some  of 
our  military  officers  have  been  splendid  sane  men 
and  others  have  been  plain  fighting  men  who 
had  no  appreciation  of  their  great  opportunity  to 
help  both  America  and  Haiti.  The  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  the  civilian  treaty-officers  and 
their  assistants. 

But  it  is  both  futile  and  silly  to  bring  person- 
alities into  even  the  most  friendly  criticism  of  our 
Haitian  venture.  After  all,  it  is  not  the  individ- 
ual gendarmerie  officer  tucked  away  in  the  lone- 
some hills  of  Northern  Haiti  who  has  really  been 
to  blame  for  the  present  condition  in  Haiti ;  nor, 
by  the  same  token,  has  it  been  due  primarily  to 
his  superior,  back  in  the  sunlit  city  of  Port  au 
Prince.  It  doesn't  take  a  trained  bloodhound  to 
follow  the  scent  back  to  Washington. 

And  there  in  Washington  we  must  search 
deeper  than  any  individual.  It  is  the  whole  un- 
knowing system — the  whole  hit  or  miss  system — 
the  whole  lack  of  a  definite  foreign  policy.    For 

201 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

instance,  blundering  into  Haiti,  we  forced  upon 
this  colored  repubKc  a  half-way  treaty.  Here 
were  military  men  and  civilians  uncoordinated, 
non-cooperating,  lacking  a  directing,  command- 
ing head.  Each  treaty  official  reported  back  to 
separate  and  distinct  departments  of  the  Wash- 
ington government.  There  was  no  real  coopera- 
tion even  among  the  American  officials  in  Haiti. 
We  blundered  along  getting  in  deeper  and  deeper. 
Now  we  are  in  up  to  our  heads — that,  at  least,  is 
one  very  positive  fact  that  no  one  can  deny.  Well, 
what  are  we  going  to  do  about  it? 

Follomng  two  whitewash  commissions  making 
blindfolded  investigations  of  alleged  military 
atrocities — some  of  which  were  committed  and 
some  of  which  were  not — ^there  was  finally  ap- 
pointed in  the  fall  of  1921  a  real  Senatorial  Com- 
mission with  Senator  Medill  McCormick  as  its 
chairman.  This  commission  proposed  to  dig 
deeply  into  the  whole  Haitian  and  Santo  Domingo 
business. 

For  weeks  it  held  open  and  fair  court  in  Wash- 
ington ;  then  came  seven  hectic  trial  days  in  Haiti 
in  which,  to  some  observers  at  least,  the  natives 
and  not  the  Occupation  were  on  trial. 

Out  of  all  this  at  least  one  definite  thing  will 
come — a  real  Caribbean  policy  for  the  United 
States.  And  it  is  a  tremendously  essential  and 
necessary  thing  at  this  time.  For  what  we  do  or 
do  not  do  in  Haiti  is  having  and  will  continue  to 

202 


WHOSE  COUNTRY  IS  HAITI? 

have  a  vital  bearing  on  the  friendship  and  politi- 
cal and  commercial  relations  of  all  the  Caribbean 
and  Latin- American  comitries,  toward  the  United 
States.  We  are  being  weighed  in  the  scales  of 
these  tiny  and  weak  half-brother  comitries — and 
the  very  fact  that  they  are  weak  and  tiny  while 
we  are  powerful  and  great  makes  it  the  more 
necessary  that  we  be  just  and  fair. 

But  there  is  one  other  consideration  of  even 
greater  importance.  What  is  the  effect  of  our 
strong  arm  methods  on  ourselves — on  our  own 
sense  of  justice  and  fairness?  Are  we  blindly 
putting  a  righteous  0.  K.  on  our  own  frequent  use 
of  force  against  smaller  and  weaker  peoples — ■ 
O.  K.'ing  them  as  morally  right  simply  because 
we  are  doing  them? 

Certainly  it  is  high  time  we  ended  all  the  cheap 
deception  and  sentimental  twaddle  about  Haiti. 
Let  us  courageously  face  facts,  and  if  we  have 
made  mistakes  let  us  bravely  acknowledge  them. 

Let  us  stay  on  and  do  our  duty  toward  Haiti — 
but  let  us  do  it  honestly  and  in  a  big  way.  Let 
us  withdraw  our  military  force  and  substitute  for 
it  broad-visioned  civilians  who  will  give  gener- 
ously from  their  wide  knowledge  and  experience. 
Let  us  make  definite  pledges  of  exactly  what  we 
intend  to  do  for  Haiti — and  then  carry  them  out. 

The  ** white  man's  burden"  will  be  a  light  and 
joyous  burden  then. 


CHAPTER  X 

OUR  EESTLESS  BROTHERS  BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

Mexico  is  not  a  part  of  the  Restless  East  but  it 
is  distinctly  a  part  of  the  Restless  World.  And 
the  Restless  World  is  small:  the  revolt  of  nation- 
alists in  Egypt  inspires  the  tired  Hindus  in  Cal- 
cutta: and  what  is  happening  in  Moscow  in  the 
great  social  and  economic  revolt  there  thrills  the 
liberal  leaders  in  Mexico  City.  For  in  this  capi- 
tal south  of  the  Texas  border  new  peons  for  old 
are  being  dreamed  of. 

I  almost  missed  finding  the  real  heart  of 
Mexico.  For  days  and  weeks  I  talked  with  Mexi- 
can officials  and  American  business  men  and 
Tampico's  oil  managers  and  had  the  run  of  the 
Mexico  City  clubs  in  general. 

They  told  me  a  score  and  one  stories :  the  pres- 
ent government  of  Mexico  was  a  dangerous  fiery 
red — as  red  as  Moscow  and  twice  as  dangerous; 
Mexico  was  in  the  high  road  to  happiness  and 
prosperity;  nothing  could  save  Mexico  but  for 
the  United  States  to  take  over  the  country;  the 
oil  wells  of  Tampico  were  growing  salty  and  in  a 
few  years  more  would  be  useless — and  thus  the 
Mexican  problem  would  be  settled  for  good  and 

204 


BELOW  THE  EIO  GRANDE 

all;  the  peons  were  in  worse  condition  than  ever 
before;  Obregon  was  the  greatest  man  in  the 
world ;  Obregon  was  a  one-armed  villain. 

I  listened  respectfully — and  then  went  on  my 
way  and  looked  some  more.  I  knew  that  some- 
where there  was  a  real  Mexican  story — but  it  was 
as  elusive  as  all  truth  is.  And  then  one  day  I 
bumped  straight  into  it. 

It  was  in  the  corridor  of  the  St.  Regis  Hotel  in 
Mexico  City.  A  little  old  gray-haired  lady  who 
has  seen  more  plain  hell  than  Foch  and  dreamed 
more  dreams  than  H.  G.  Wells,  guided  me  bang 
into  my  story.  Her  name  was  Mother  Jones,  and 
it's  a  right  name — she  mothers  half  the  world — 
the  lower  half. 

She  led  me  straight  up  to  a  man  in  "store 
clothes"  and  a  flannel  shirt.  His  face  was  lined 
with  deep  **sun  wrinkles"  and  his  eyes  were 
gentle  and  smiling.  He  had  worked  in  mines  in 
Arizona  in  his  younger  days  and  could  stumble 
along  with  English. 

** Here's  one  of  my  boys,"  she  said,  patting  the 
miner's  arm  as  she  spoke.  *'If  you  want  some- 
thing about  Mexico  he  '11  give  it  to  you. ' ' 

I  led  him  up  to  my  room  and  seated  him  in  the 
one  big  chair. 

''You're  a  miner,"  I  began. 

''Si,  but  mine  in  Sonora  he  shut  down  and  work 
finished.  For  five  six  months  no  work.  Miners 
no  got  dollars,  ninas  hungry,  womans  crying.   So 

205 


THE  EISINa  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

I  say,  *I  go  Cuidad  Mexico  see  General  Calles  and 
he  give  us  farm  for  work.'  .  .  .  Last  week  I 
come  here  and  see  Mi  General.  He  take  me  in  his 
automobile  to  Secretario  Villareal  and  he  say 
'Sure  we  give  you  miners  land.  You  mus'  work 
or  starve.  You  work  for  yourself.  We  give  you 
big  farm,  you  make  small  farms  and  you  miners 
go  work  on  own  farms.'  " 

My  friend  sat  back  in  his  chair  and  lit  a  fresh 
cigarette.  It  was  so  simple.  Men  unemployed, 
and  hungry — well  put  them  to  work  on  idle  lands. 
Like  the  Russian  proletariat,  ninety  per  cent,  of 
them  had  come  from  the  farms,  so  they  could  go 
back  to  the  farms  now.  The  government  would 
sell  them  machinery  and  animals  at  cost  and  see 
them  through  to  the  time  of  the  first  crop.  They 
could  pay  back  in  small  payments  through  a 
period  of  years.  Land  that  most  of  them  had 
been  dreaming  of  for  a  half-dozen  generations 
would  be  their  own;  they  would  become  econom- 
ically independent;  they  would  become  good  citi- 
zens; they  would  want  their  children  to  go  to 
school;  they  would  want  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of 
their  government. 

And  this  in  Mexico!  The  land  of  revolution 
and  civil  war  and  the  manana  habit — worthless, 
drunken,  vicious,  ignorant,  brutal  Mexico ! 

I  looked  up  Mother  Jones  again  when  my  miner 
had  gone.  **I'm  getting  hot  on  the  real  story 
now,"  I  told  her.    **Pass  me  on  some  more." 

206 


BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

She  did.  The  next  day  in  the  tow  of  a  very  fine 
young,  liberal,  States-educated  Mexican  I  started 
out  really  to  see  the  high  officials  of  the  govern- 
ment. I  had  seen  most  of  them  before,  but  now  I 
was  to  talk  to  them  freely  and  frankly  as  fellow 
men,  and  not  as  politicians  and  statesmen. 

Several  days  later  when  we  had  finished  the 
rounds  I  took  a  train  for  the  northwest  and  Villa 
and  the  great  bandit  colonies.  Then  slowly  I 
worked  my  way  to  the  border  and  to  the  States. 

And  so  it  was  that  I  found  the  real  heart  of 
these  ten  tremendous  years  of  war  and  revolu- 
tion. It  meant  a  good  deal  to  me  because  I  had  a 
background  of  an  old  Mexico  that  distinctly  was 
not  concerned  with  miners  and  peons — that 
instead  was  loaded  down  with  the  weight  of  for- 
eign interference,  alien  exploitation,  and  neglect 
of  the  common  millions. 

In  the  glorious  old  swashbuckling  days  of  the 
empire  I  had  gone  to  Mexico  and  for  three  years 
had  driven  men  and  cattle  alike  on  a  sugar  planta- 
tion. Fifty  miles  below  me  there  were  plantations 
where  real  peonage  was  practised,  and  a  hundred 
miles  away  the  Villa  National  where  men  were 
lured,  chained  in  gangs,  herded  in  barb-wired  and 
guarded  corrals  and  worked  in  steaming  tobacco 
fields  until  death  broke  their  false  contracts  for 
them.  Still  farther  down,  in  Yucatan,  brave 
Yaqui  Indians,  with  the  hearts  of  lions,  brought 
down  in  prison  trains  from  their  hills  of  Sonora, 

207 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

were  worked,  beaten  and  killed  on  the  terrible 
henequen  plantations. 

In  those  days  I  thought  Diaz  to  be  one  of  the 
great  men  of  the  world — wise,  just,  brave,  the 
savior  and  maker  of  his  country. 

Then  the  revolution  flared  and  one  day  my 
hero  Diaz  slipped  out  of  Mexico  City  and  foolish, 
stupid  Madero  rode  into  power.  The  grizzled, 
unwashed  men  who  rode  with  him  were  to  me 
bandits,  trouble-makers,  the  riff-raff,  the  scour- 
ings  of  the  country.  If  Madero  was  sincere  he 
was  the  one  honest  man  among  a  hundred  thou- 
sand scoundrels. 

Then  the  revolution  hit  my  part  of  the  country 
and  I  left  between  suns,  bringing  out  with  me  the 
story  of  a  foolish  Madero  and  his  brutal  bandits 
riding  their  stolen  horses  behind  a  banner  of  false 
revolution. 

That  was  ten  years  ago.  And  now  I  have  come 
out  again  from  adventuring  in  Mexico — but  this 
time  I  have  another  story  to  tell. 

Down  in  a  little  village  in  the  state  of  Vera 
Cruz  there  is  a  public  plaza  that  ten  years  ago  had 
two  circular  promenade  walks — one  for  the  gen- 
try in  shoes  and  rehozos,  and  the  other  for  the 
peons  in  blankets  and  sandals.  To-day  the  peon 
walk  is  overgrown  with  grass  and  weeds:  these 
colorful  tropical  nights  the  entire  village  strolls 
where  only  the  high  and  royal  dared  tread  a 
decade  ago. 

208 


BELOW  THE  EIO  GRANDE 

That,  for  me  at  least,  is  a  part  of  the  real  heart 
of  Mexico.  It  is  the  story  of  human  beings  dream- 
ing and  fighting  and  struggling  for  elusive  bits 
of  freedom  and  self-respect — for  things  they  can 
not  pronounce  but  for  things  they  unconsciously 
know  they  have  been  cheated  out  of. 

After  all,  nothing  really  counts  for  much  except 
the  progress  and  advancement  of  the  common 
man — and  so  it  is  that  peons  and  not  pesos,  men 
and  not  money,  liberties  and  not  foreign  lands, 
honor  and  not  oil,  flash  before  me  in  this  mem- 
ory-film of  Mexico  and  her  ten-year  revolution. 

It  is  still  a  revolution  but  one-quarter  won. 
There  is  education  to  be  gained,  economic  free- 
dom to  be  secured,  real  political  expression  to  be 
voiced.  The  revolution  may  be  over  and  the  evo- 
lution now  under  way. 

From  a  constructive  standpoint  the  French 
Revolution  failed  because  for  hundreds  of  years 
the  common  people  had  absolutely  no  experience 
in  local  or  national  self-government,  no  training 
in  cooperation  and  voluntary  unions.  The  suc- 
cess of  the  great  Russian  revolution  was  brought 
about  not  only  by  the  thrilling  moving  idea  that 
gave  it  fire,  but  because  for  generations  the  peas- 
ants of  Russia  not  only  had  their  own  great  co- 
operative organizations  in  smooth  working  order 
but  because  they  had  already  tasted  the  flavor 
of  local  self-government  and  had  trained  their 
hands  for  it. 

209 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Mexico's  fifteen  million  peons  are  exactly  in 
the  same  condition  as  the  French  peasants  of  a 
century  and  a  quarter  ago — dependent  on  their 
leaders,  many  of  whom  are  selfish  and  ambitious 
men.  As  yet  they  have  won  little  of  the  things 
they  dreamed  of,  though  these  years  of  struggle 
and  revolution  have  brought  them  an  abiding 
sense  of  freedom  and  a  conviction  of  their  inalien- 
able right  to  its  enjoyment. 

That  is  a  great  deal,  but  after  all,  it  is  still 
primarily  a  question  of  leadership.  Their  revo- 
lutionary evolution — or  their  evolutionary  revo- 
lution, just  as  you  choose — can  be  at  this  moment 
tragically  retarded  or  brilliantly  advanced  by  the 
wrong  or  the  right  leaders. 

Mexican  political  leaders  to-day  form  a  triangle 
— one  might  almost  say  the  eternal  political 
triangle.  On  one  side  are  certain  conservative, 
reactionary  forces  mth  a  small  but  determined 
representation  in  the  present  Cabinet.  Behind 
this  group  are  aligned  the  great  old  land  and 
money  interests  of  Mexico — ^the  half  feudal  Mex- 
ico of  the  past. 

A  second  side  of  the  triangle  is  painted  a  vivid 
Socialistic  red  and  is  composed  of  radical  and 
liberal  leaders,  such  as  General  Plutarco  Elias 
Calles,  present  head  of  the  Cabinet ;  Adolf o  de  la 
Huerta,  with  the  important  portfolio  of  Finance 
tucked  under  his  arm ;  Jose  Vasconcelos,  head  of 
the  Department  of  Education:  Antonio  Villar- 

210 


BELOW  TPIE  RIO  GRANDE 

real,  Secretary  of  Agriculture;  with  the  more 
radical  Luis  N.  Morones,  head  of  Mexican  labor, 
Felipe  Carrillo,  firebrand  leader  from  Yucatan, 
Samuel  0.  Yudico  and  a  hundred  more  real  revo- 
lutionists behind  them.  They  are  the  fighting 
Left  Wing  of  the  government. 

And  in  between,  forming  the  third  angle  of  our 
triangle  is  President  Obregon,  shrewd,  capable, 
hard  working,  mth  a  good  set  of  brains  and  a 
strong  and  mlling  left  hand — he  has  already 
given  his  right  arm  to  his  country. 

It  is  a  difficult  job  that  President  Obregon  had 
wished  upon  him — this  harmonizing  "White  Mexi- 
co mth  Red  Mexico.  It 's  carrying  water  on  both 
shoulders.  And  if  there  is  any  single  figure  in 
Mexico  to-day  who  can  perform  this  difficult  task 
successfully  it  is  this  man  from  Sonora.  He  ap- 
parently holds  for  the  moment  the  confidence  of 
both  ends ;  he  apparently  can  turn  from  a  confer- 
ence with  conservative  Foreign  Minister  Pani  and 
talk  with  radical  de  la  Huerta  without  changing 
one  iota  the  expression  on  his  powerful  face. 

He  is  a  fighter  and  a  politician;  which  is 
another  way  of  saying  that  he  is  both  a  brave 
man  and  a  willing  compromiser.  He  stands  in 
the  middle  of  a  bridge  with  opposing  forces  on 
both  bridgeheads  that  are  quite  willing  to  blow 
him  up  if  he  makes  a  false  step. 

He  is  what  we  Americans  love  to  call  *  *  a  strong 
man."    He  doesn't  hesitate  to  order  some  revolt- 

211 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

ing  general  parked  up  against  a  handy  stone  wall 
and  bumped  off  in  approved  style.  Nor  does  he 
hesitate  to  protect  Mexican  labor  against  a  dozen 
old-fashioned  methods  of  discipline. 

And  his  troubles  are  legion.  Not  only  does  he 
face  continual  friction  within  his  own  Cabinet, 
but  he  must  attempt  to  win  over  and  placate 
American  big  business — ranch  and  mine  owners, 
railroad  investors  and  speculators  and  the  oily  oil 
manipulators — and  at  the  same  time  give  positive 
assurance  to  his  own  people  that  he  isn't  doing 
this. 

Whatever  conscious  public  opinion  there  is  in 
Mexico  to-day — and  it  is  decidedly  a  growing  fac- 
tor— it  is  against  the  trading  of  any  Mexican 
rights  for  United  States  recognition.  Over  Mexi- 
co there  is  a  determined  spirit  of  nationalism  that 
refuses  to  be  bought  or  bullied  by  the  big 
*' brother"  to  the  north. 

"With  Obregon  it  is  over  and  over  again  a  case 
of  damn  you  if  you  do  and  damn  you  if  you  don 't. 
If  he  pleases  Washington  and  Wall  Street  he 
faces  what  might  easily  prove  a  brand-new  up- 
heaval— and  the  fate  of  Carranza.  If  he  con- 
tinues to  make  dramatic  Mexican  gestures  with 
his  one  remaining  arm  there  may  be  no  recogni- 
tion, no  financial  arrangement,  no  rebuilding  of 
the  physical  Mexico.  Why  anybody  wants  to  be 
president  of  Mexico,  I  don't  know. 

But  there  are  some  thousands,  or  hundreds  of 

212 


BELOW  THE  EIO  GRANDE 

thousands  of  her  citizens  who  do.  It  is  my  opin- 
ion that  General  Calles  is  one.  Apparently  he  is 
absolutely  loyal  to  Obregon — but  he  is  far  more 
loyal  to  his  revolution  and  what  it  stood  for. 

To  me  Calles  is  the  most  interesting  figure  in 
Mexico  City.  In  the  old  days  he  had  been  a 
school-teacher  in  the  hills  of  Sonora.  His  eyes 
still  have  an  odd  squint  about  them  like  those  of  a 
dreamer  peering  into  the  future. 

His  face  is  hard,  with  deep  seams  that  sun  and 
wind  and  exposure  have  left;  his  voice  is  rough 
and  heavy;  his  manner  is  brusk  and  almost  brutal. 
And  yet  you  would  know  him  for  a  school-teacher 
and  a  dreamer.  I  don't  believe  he  would  hesitate 
to  kill  a  man  with  his  own  hands — though  I  am 
sure  he  would  willingly  sacrifice  his  life  to  help 
the  peons  of  his  Sonora  hills. 

It  was  Calles  who,  as  Minister  of  "War  under 
de  la  Huerta,  planned  most  the  scheme  of  dis- 
banding parts  of  the  army  and  putting  the  men 
on  the  land  in  ** bandit  colonies."  I  asked  him 
how  he  happened  to  figure  it  out. 

*' Nothing  could  have  been  simpler,"  he 
answered  me  with  a  trace  of  impatience.  *' These 
common  men  had  been  fighting  for  ten  years  for 
land — so  it  was  the  natural  thing  to  give  it  to 
them.    They  're  happy  now. ' ' 

Calles  is  almost  as  direct  as  this  about  every- 
thing else.  He  knows  what  he  wants  Mexico  to 
want.    I  don't  know  how  much  patience  he '11  have. 

213 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

He  understands  things,  anyway  —  and  by 
'things"  I  mean  the  power  of  the  United  States 
over  Mexico  for  both  good  and  evil.  He  appre- 
ciates what  the  displeasure  of  Washington  means 
and  how  far  Mexican  labor,  for  instance,  may 
expect  to  go  before  American  capital  in  Mexico 
screams  for  help.  He  is  a  wise  man  in  a  country 
where  wisdom  is  at  a  great  premium. 

There  are  a  few  other  wise  men  there.  One  of 
them  is  de  la  Huerta.  During  the  six  months  be- 
tween the  death  of  Carranza  in  May,  1920,  and 
the  inauguration  of  Obregon  in  November,  de  la 
Huerta  was  provisional  president.  Later  when 
Obregon  selected  his  Cabinet  he  made  him  secre- 
tary of  finance.  This  means  that  such  delicate 
and  all-important  questions  as  the  changing  of 
the  Constitution  to  suit  the  Tampico  oil  magnates, 
the  handling  of  the  international  financial  situa- 
tion and  the  whole  Mexican  currency  proposition, 
must  be  directed  by  him. 

Now,  de  la  Huerta  has  a  strange  combination  of 
Yaqui  Indian,  Spanish  and  Polish-Jewish  blood 
racing  through  his  veins.  He  is  not  a  soldier — 
but  he's  almost  everything  else.  He  is  a  social- 
ist, an  internationalist,  a  laborite,  a  radical  of 
fairly  crimson  tint  and  an  extremely  brilliant  and 
shrewd  financier. 

He  stands  four  square  with  Calles,  at  least  at 
present.  They  are  the  heavyweights  of  the  Left 
Wing — they  and  Luis  Morones,  the  Labor  leader. 

214 


BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

Morones  wears  checked  suits,  silk  shirts  and  a 
heavy  caliber  revolver  and  has  one  bad  eye.  He 
is  Mexican  union  labor:  he's  the  parent  and  the 
child  rolled  in  one.  And  Mexican  union  labor  is  a 
power  that  is  the  *'X" — the  unkno^\^l  quantity — 
in  the  political  and  revolutionary  life  of  the 
country. 

When  the  Carranza  revolution — which  is  hope- 
fully referred  to  as  "the  last  revolution" — came 
along  it  was  the  power  of  action  and  the  power  of 
sabotage  of  the  union  labor  in  Mexico  City  that 
finished  Carranza 's  slender  chances.  Mexican 
labor  has  neither  the  organization  nor  the  dis- 
cipline that  Petrograd  and  Moscow  radical  labor 
had  in  those  terrific  days  of  1917  when  armed 
workmen  swung  the  revolution  the  way  they 
wished — ^but  it  is  growing  in  the  consciousness  of 
its  power.  It  has  its  friends  at  court  to-day.  It 
is  a  conscious  part  of  the  government. 

No  longer  are  striking  workers  shot  down  by 
machine-guns  as  they  were  in  the  old  days  of 
Porfirio  Diaz — and  they  know  it.  They  tell  a 
story  around  Mexico  City  of  Celestino  Gasca,  one 
time  shoe-maker  and  now  governor  of  the  Federal 
District.  During  a  railroad  strike  Gasa  was  told 
to  order  out  his  troops  to  put  do^vn  the  strike. 

"I  resign  my  office,"  he  replied.  *'I  am  a 
workman  first  and  a  governor  afterward." 

With  such  men  in  strongly  entrenched  official 
positions,  Morones  advances  with  his  great  labor 

215 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

movement.  In  every  industry  and  craft  is  it  being 
pushed.  Even  the  plantation  workers  are  being 
effectively  organized  and  already  in  certain  sec- 
tions they  have  secured  increased  wages,  shorter 
hours  and  better  working  conditions. 

Morones  is  admittedly  a  radical.  And  so  is 
Felipe  Carrillo  of  Yucatan.  Felipe  is  a  tall, 
dashing,  fighting  leader.  He  plunges  ahead  by 
instinct — I  mean  he  has  no  background  of  radical 
training  or  education  but  instinctively  takes  the 
side  of  the  oppressed.  In  this  particular  case 
they  happen  to  be  the  Indian  peons  in  his  own 
beloved  state  of  Yucatan. 

Two  years  ago  when  Carrillo  was  preaching  the 
beauties  of  cooperation  to  his  own  Indians  he 
decided  to  hold  a  great  local  celebration  on  the 
Mexican  national  holiday,  the  Fifth  of  May. 

** While  we  are  at  it,  Felipe,  let's  turn  this  holi- 
day into  a  fine  old  Socialistic  celebration  of  the 
anniversary  of  the  birthday  of  Karl  Marx,"  an 
American  radical  friend,  Robert  Haberman,  sug- 
gested to  him. 

"All  right — that's  great!  ,  .  .  Say,  by  the 
way,  who  is  this  Karl  Marx,  anyway?"  And  this 
from  the  leader  of  the  Yucatan  Socialists. 

I  stopped  writing  here  for  a  moment  and  went 
over  the  past  two  or  three  pages — and  counted 
the  word  ** Socialists,"  four  times.  That's  too 
many  these  days,  unless  I  want  to  leave  the  im- 
pression that  Mexico  is  about  to  blossom  out  into 

216 


BELOW  THE  EIO  GRANDE 

a  nice  brilliant  Socialists'  Utopia — and  I  decid- 
edly don 't  want  to  leave  any  such  idea. 

But  there  is  a  considerable  section  of  the  city 
working-population  that  has  been  thrilled  by  the 
promises  of  radical  agitators.  After  all,  to  thou- 
sands of  these  peons  Socialism  is  a  magic  word — 
and  common  people  over  the  whole  world  must 
live  and  die  by  magic  words.  In  Siberia  I  found 
ignorant  Russian  peasants  speaking  of  the 
"soviet"  as  the  great  magic  healer  of  their 
trampled  lives ;  it  was  a  word  to  conjure  with ;  it 
was  a  word  that  opened  up  a  vision  of  some 
heaven  on  earth  to  them.  It  was  a  battle-cry,  and 
a  dream  that  they  would  follow  at  any  cost. 

And  so  it  is  down  below  the  Rio  Grande.  They 
have  had  their  own  magic  words  there — for  ten 
years  they  were  "tierra  y  lihertad,"  land  and 
freedom — ^just  as  for  a  half-century  Russian  peas- 
ants found  hope  in  the  two  words  "Zemla  e 
svoboda" — land  and  freedom. 

Now  many  of  these  peons  are  taking  fresh 
hope  from  the  new  magic  word  ''Socialism." 
Down  in  the  steaming  henequen  fields  of  Yucatan 
fully  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  Indian  peons 
joined  an  actual  Socialist  party  and  in  their  hat- 
bands wore  a  bit  of  red  pasteboard — a  magic 
charm  that  would  bring  them  land  and  food  and 
happiness. 

Mexico  has  only  fairly  started  om  the  long 
climb  upward,  but  she  does  have  these  shibboleths 

217 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

that  make  the  trail  seem  shorter  and  the  burdens 
lighter.  After  all  there  are  many  short-cuts,  but 
there  are  many  bad  bits  of  road  that  must  be 
traveled.  There's  the  road  of  education,  for 
example. 

Mexico  is  making  frantic  efforts  to  pave  this 
now.  A  young  man  with  a  real  vision  is  going 
after  the  job.  His  name  is  Jose  Vasconcelos  and 
he  dreams  of  a  school  in  every  Indian  pueblo  in 
every  state  in  Mexico. 

*'As  a  start  we  are  sending  to  the  Indian  vil- 
lages traveling  teachers  who  take  three  or  four  of 
the  brightest  Indian  girls  and  train  them,'*  he 
explained  to  me.  *' These  girls  in  turn  open  little 
village  schools  and  teach  the  rudiments  of  read- 
ing and  writing  in  Spanish. 

**In  thirty  different  cities,"  he  went  on,  "we 
are  opening  up  manual-training  schools  for  the 
poor  children — free  schools  that  vdW  help  to  give 
Mexico  a  group  of  young  men  and  women  who 
have  mastered  a  trade. 

Then  he  dreamed  for  me  a  scheme  of  placing  a 
library  of  one  hundred  standard  books  in  every 
village.  Young  Mexican  artists  would  travel 
about  the  country  teaching  the  natives  basket 
weaving  and  pottery  decorations  and  other  pure 
native  arts.  Small  traveling  orchestras,  with 
their  expenses  partly  paid  by  the  government  and 
with  free  transportation,  would  bring  ideas  of 
good  music  into  the  villages  of  these  music-loving 

218 


BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

people.  In  Mexico  City,  Guadalajara,  Yucatan 
and  Monterey  there  would  be  great  national  uni- 
versities. 

It  was  an  inspiring  dream — possibly  for  the 
time  being,  it  will  prove  only  that.  And  possibly 
it  will  come  true,  as  other  dreams  in  Mexico  have 
come  true.  There  was  the  dream  of  putting  the 
soldiers  on  the  land,  for  example — that  has  come 
true  with  a  bang. 

On  December  1,  1920,  the  regular  army  of 
Mexico  consisted  of  338  generals,  15,891  colonels, 
majors,  captains  and  lieutenants,  and  77,295 
soldiers.  This  was  only  the  regular  army.  Fol- 
lowing the  defeat  of  Carranza  thousands  of  revo- 
lutionists and  so-called  bandits  gladly  made  terms 
with  the  new  government  and  for  the  moment 
became  a  part  of  the  army.  This  move  was 
necessary  for  two  reasons:  first,  it  secured  a 
livelihood  through  military  pay  for  these  men 
who  had  been  following  war  for  years ;  second,  it 
brought  these  armed  men  under  military  dis- 
cipline and  government  control. 

This  enrolling  of  all  the  revolutionary  anti- 
Carranza  forces  raised  the  grand  total  of  the 
army  on  the  first  of  1921,  to  669  generals,  18,992 
officers,  and  93,132  men.  To  keep  this  force  going 
an  appropriation  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-one 
million  pesos  for  the  anny  and  thirty-five  million 
for  the  arsenals  was  necessary,  out  of  a  total 
federal  appropriation  of  two  hundred  and  seventy 

219 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

million — more  than  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  total  gov- 
ernment income. 

Drastic  methods  were  decided  on.  A  triple 
plan  affair  was  devised  whereby  first  of  all  there 
was  to  be  a  decrease  through  volmitary  discharge, 
that  was  to  be  further  augmented  by  forced  dis- 
charge of  all  incompetent  soldiers  and  officers 
who  could  not  establish  their  rank;  but  the  real 
solution  was  the  formation  of  a  number  of  sol- 
dier agriculture  colonies. 

The  words  ''Bandit  colonies"  may  have  a 
rather  bad  sting  to  them — but  not  down  in  Mex- 
ico. For  ten  years  the  difference  between 
** bandits"  and  ** revolutionists"  has  been  a  mat- 
ter of  point  of  view.  So  these  colonies  might  just 
as  well  be  called  ''revolutionary  colonies." 

And  the  big  thing  about  them  is  that  they  have 
actually  been  formed  and  are  really  working. 
Thousands  of  soldiers  who  for  years  have  been 
following  the  trade  of  fighting — with  the  dream 
of  land  always  somewhere  in  the  background — 
have  been  put  on  the  land  in  colonies,  supplied 
with  the  tools  of  farming  and  financially  backed 
and  cared  for  by  the  government.  Mexican 
swords  have  actually  been  beaten  into  plow- 
shares and  pruning-hooks  and  into  books  and 
pencils — ^money  saved  from  army  disarmament 
automatically  goes  into  education. 

I  know  of  no  greater  adventure  in  pioneering 
than  this  back-to-the-land  movement  of  these  sol- 

220 


BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

diers  who  have  been  fighting  and  revolting 
for  years,  that  land  and  some  intangible,  indefin- 
ite thing  called  "freedom,"  might  be  theirs. 
Villa  is  one  of  them — Pancho  Villa,  despised 
bandit,  or  beloved  knight,  just  as  you  choose.  I 
searched  him  out  in  his  own  private  colony — and 
the  Villa  I  f omid  was  a  vastly  different  Villa  from 
the  two-gun  villain  of  the  American  press.  I  mil 
tell  you  of  him  just  as  I  found  him  and  just  as  he 
appeared  to  me. 

For  three  long  dusty  days  I  rode  north  from 
Mexico  City — then  an  eight-hour  ride  on  a 
bumpy  railroad-stub  to  the  filthy  little  mud  vil- 
lage of  Rosario  in  the  hills  of  Northern  Durango : 
then  a  six-hour  valley-ride  in  a  rickety,  high- 
wheeled  vehicle  behind  mangy,  dwarfed  mules  to 
the  ranch. 

There,  in  a  long,  one-storied  adobe  house  that 
nestled  against  a  great  bro\Mi  adobe  church,  I 
found  him — Don  Pancho,  the  Killer,  or  Don 
Pancho  the  Knight,  as  you  will.  In  soiled  shirt, 
beltless  baggy  trousers  and  the  grimy  hands  of  a 
Mexican  rancher,  he  greeted  me  in  the  doorway 
of  his  bedroom.  He  was  a  big  two  hundred- 
pound  man  with  crumpled  black  hair,  a  well 
trimmed  mustache,  a  great  handsome  head  with 
unusually  high  forehead  and  remarkable  black 
eyes. 

He  was  friendly  and  hospitable.  We  sat  do\vn 
in  his  room  for  a  while  and  then  he  led  the  way 

221 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

into  the  patio  and  through  a  gateway  to  a  long 
shed  where  he  kept  the  farming  implements  the 
government  had  given  him.  Here  were  parked 
two  or  three  heavy  gasoline  trucks,  a  pair  of  trac- 
tors, a  threshing-machine,  and  a  full  set  of  wheat 
drills,  plows,  cultivators,  and  the  score  and  one 
implements  used  on  a  great  modern  ranch. 

Villa  was  proud  of  them.  He  slipped  into  the 
seat  of  a  baby  tractor  and  threw  on  a  lever.  He 
petted  it  almost  as  he  would  have  petted  a  horse. 

*' They 're  all  ready  for  use  when  we  want 
them,"  he  said.  ''I've  about  six  hundred  acres  of 
wheat  in  now  and  next  year  I'll  have  several 
times  that  number.  .  .  I'm  going  to  go  into  the 
cattle  business,  too.  I  could  run  forty  thousand 
head  on  this  place — if  I  had  the  money  to  buy 
them.  .  .  .  Some  people  are  afraid  to  trust  me. 
They  wouldn't  even  trust  me  for  cattle." 

He  stopped  and  looked  down  the  long  trail  of 
years  that  have  passed.  He  was  triste — he  was 
a  defeated  champion,  dreaming  of  days  and 
glories  that  were. 

For  a  minute  or  two  he  sat  on  the  little  iron 
seat  of  his  baby  tractor  and  dreamed.  A  blazing 
Mexican  sun  streamed  down  into  the  alleyway: 
everything  was  motionless  and  still  except  for 
the  droning  voices  of  men  loitering  about  in  front 
of  the  church. 

^^Caramha!"  he  sighed.  His  dream  was  over. 
Forgetful  of  his  injured  leg,  he  jumped  down 

222 


BELOW  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

from  the  baby  tractor  and  led  the  way  to  his  black- 
smith shop. 

With  the  pride  of  a  boy  Villa  pointed  to  the 
open  door:  *'See,  it's  unlocked;  everything  is 
safe  aronnd  here.  You  could  leave  your  coat  and 
purse  any^vhere  and  they  would  never  be 
touched. ' ' 

I  muttered  words  of  praise  while  he  led  me  to 
the  front  of  the  old  adobe  church  of  the  village. 
A  score  of  men  were  lounging  about  and  just 
within  the  entrance  in  front  of  an  improvised 
store  counter,  a  half-dozen  ex- Villa  soldiers  were 
making  Sunday  morning  purchases  of  lard,  cigar- 
ettes, corn  and  beans. 

We  edged  our  way  past  the  counter  and  walked 
to  the  rear  of  the  church.  Everywhere  there  were 
piled  bags  of  corn,  cans  of  lard,  tools,  and  the 
traps  and  clatter  of  a  store  and  a  warehouse. 

There  were  no  flickering  candles  nor  clean 
altar  cloths,  but  the  statuary  and  the  pictures  had 
been  left  undamaged  and  were  still  in  place. 

Villa  pointed  to  pictures  of  the  saints  and 
smiled.  ''When  I  came  here  these  poor  fellows 
were  thin  and  hungry,*'  he  joked.  "See  how  fat 
they  are  since  I  brought  in  all  this  corn  and  food." 

After  a  minute  or  two  he  led  me  out  of  the 
church,  down  a  filthy  narrow  mud  street,  through 
a  large  door  into  a  big  patio  surrounded  by  a 
string  of  rooms  made  of  adobe  brick. 

"This  is  to  be  our  school,"  he  said  with  tre- 
223 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

mendous  pride.  ''I'm  fixing  it  up  as  fast  as  I 
can.  Everything  is  tumbled  down  and  the  roofs 
have  fallen  in,  but  I  am  repairing  them  and  in  a 
few  weeks  we  shall  have  a  school  here  with  four 
teachers.  It's  going  to  be  the  best  school  I  know 
how  to  start,  and  every  child  on  this  ranch  is  going 
to  attend.  .  .  .  Schools  are  what  Mexico  needs 
above  everything  else.  If  I  was  at  the  head  of 
things  I  would  put  plenty  of  schools  in  the  cities 
and  toAvns  and  besides  I'd  put  a  school  on  every 
hacienda  and  ranch.   .    .    ." 

Again  he  fell  to  dreaming.  ''Poor,  ignorant 
Mexico,"  he  said  slowly.  "Until  she  has  educa- 
tion nothing  much  can  be  done.  I  know — I  was 
twenty-five  before  I  could  sign  my  own  name. 
And  I  know  what  it  is  to  try  to  help  people  who 
can't  understand  what  you  are  trying  to  do  for 
them.  I  fought  ten  years  for  them.  I  had  a  prin- 
ciple— I  fought  ten  years  so  that  the  poor  man 
could  live  like  a  human  being  should,  have  his 
land  and  send  his  children  to  school  and  have 
human  freedom.  But  most  of  them  were  too 
ignorant  to  understand  my  ideas.  That's  the 
reason  I  quit  fighting.  I  kept  fighting  as  long  as 
Carranza  was  in  power,  but  now  with  Obregon 
at  the  head  I'd  be  doing  more  harm  than  good, 
so  I  've  quit.  .  .  .  Nothing  can  ever  be  done  until 
the  common  people  of  Mexico  are  educated." 

No  one  knows  better  than  this  strong,  half- 
ignorant  man  what  this  job  is  or  how  necessary  it 

224 


BELOW  THE  EIO  GRANDE 

is.  With  education,  he  might  now  be  living  in 
the  palace  in  Mexico  City  instead  of  on  an 
unknown  ranch  in  the  hills  of  Durango. 

*'I  am  through  fighting,"  he  went  on.  **I  only- 
want  to  live  and  die  here  in  peace  and  do  what  I 
can  to  help  my  own  people,  and  then  when  I'm 
finished,  Mexico  will  say  that  I  was  not  the  bad 
man  I  have  been  pictured. ' ' 

His  voice  trailed  off;  then  once  more:  **I've 
finished  fighting.  Nothing  will  ever  get  me  to 
pick  up  my  rifle  again — and  we  have  two  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  rifles  among  my  own  men  in 
these  hills  here — unless  Mexico  is  invaded  or  the 
government  fails  to  treat  my  own  people  justly. 
Then  they'll  hear  again  from  Pancho  Villa.  .  . 
Adios!    Buena  fortuna!" 

I  climbed  up  to  the  back  seat  of  the  old  buggy. 
The  driver  cracked  his  whip  over  the  flank  of 
the  little  black  mules  and  we  were  off.  It  was  six 
hours  to  Rosario  and  ham  and  eggs  at  the  China- 
man's freight-car-restaurant — and  then  two  days 
of  dust  and  heat  to  the  border. 

I  had  found  the  heart  of  the  Mexico  of  to-day — 
and  it  was  beating  bravely  for  new  peons  for  old. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

Hard-headed  business  men,  both  in  America 
and  in  foreign  fields,  may  scoff  at  the  idea  of 
**soul  savers"  having  a  very  particular  and  a 
very  important  part  in  this  story  of  world  unrest 
— but  they  have,  just  the  same.    It  is  a  star  part. 

The  day  when  Force  shall  cease  to  be  the  vehicle 
for  the  dissemination  of  our  civilization  is  fast 
dawning.  Lord  Eeading  in  India  is  learning — 
just  as  the  Allied  Powers  have  learned  in  Russia 
— that  ideas  can  not  be  checked  by  bayonets  nor 
projected  by  bullets.  They  can  only  be  success- 
fully and  lastingly  combated  by  better  ideas,  sired 
by  sympathetic  understanding  and  a  real  desire 
to  help  in  the  long  climb  upward. 

And  this  is  where  the  missionary  comes  in — 
the  new  model  missionary,  with  his  native  student 
protegees. 

I'm  tempted  to  tell  the  real  missionary  story 
of  Korea.  I  promised  I  wouldn't,  but  there  are 
times  when  even  a  word  pledge  must  be  stretched. 
I'll  let  the  story  itself  plead  its  own  cause  and 
square  me,  if  it  can. 

It  was  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  it  was 

226 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

cold  and  drizzly  and  muddy  and  we  were  hungry 
and  absolutely  tired  out.  Our  car  had  broken 
down  and  we  went  trudging  along  a  sloppy  dirty 
road  in  the  general  direction  of  Seoul,  the  capital 
and  heart  of  poor  discouraged  Korea.  It  had 
been  almost  a  year  since  the  great  burst  of  revolu- 
tionary fire  had  spread  over  this  unfortunate 
country,  but  the  embers  of  revolt  were  still  smold- 
ering— the  blackened  ruins  of  homes  and  hopes 
still  lay  like  deep  pitted  scars  over  the  country. 

We — two  young  missionaries  and  myself — had 
driven  the  ninety  miles  to  a  tiny,  nameless  Korean 
village  where  a  Christian  church  and  a  score  of 
native  houses  had  been  burnt  by  a  senseless, 
Japanese  non-commissioned  officer  and  his  men. 
Our  car  had  broken  down  a  few  miles  from  Seoul 
and  now  early  in  the  morning  we  were  plowing  our 
way  home  through  melted  snow  and  a  cold  drizzle. 

I  was  out  of  patience  with  the  Korean  revolu- 
tion and  thoroughly  disgusted  at  the  Japanese 
soldiers  for  not  having  done  their  village-burning 
closer  to  Seoul — and  peeved  at  missionaries  and 
the  whole  world  in  general.  And  I  was  dead  tired 
and  so  hungry  I  would  have  fought  Jack  Dempsey 
for  the  right  to  chew  the  leather  upholstery  in  the 
car.    I  was  looking  for  an  argument. 

**You  missionaries  in  Korea  have  got  a  lot  of 
nerve  to  deny  you've  had  anything  to  do  with  this 
revolutionary  movement  here,"  I  began  on  the 
gentlest  and  smallest  of  the  pair. 

227 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

**Wliy,  we  don't  deny  we've  had  something  to 
do  with  the  inspiration  of  the  revolution,*'  he 
answered  me  in  a  pained  but  very  kindly  voice. 
''How  can  we  deny  we  had  a  considerable  part  in 
this  great  awakening  of  Korea?  Isn't  Christian- 
ity a  militant  religion?  Isn't  it  a  religion  that 
teaches  right  and  justice  and  equality,  and  com- 
mands that  men  fight  for  their  liberties  .    .    .  ? 

**The  Japanese  are  right  in  their  contention 
that  American  missionaries  have  had  something 
to  do  with  the  re-birth  of  Korea.  We  are  to 
blame  indirectly  for  a  lot  of  this  trouble.  And" 
- — he  hesitated  for  a  second  or  two  as  we  strode 
on — ''and  we're  proud  of  it." 

I  slipped  my  ann  through  his  as  we  walked  side 
by  side.  I  was  ashamed  of  myself.  He  and  the 
other  exiles  working  their  lives  out  in  these  far- 
away lands  for  the  barest  of  a  living,  were  doing 
the  big  thing.  They  were  taking  the  great  chance. 
There  were  thoroughly  brave  men. 

A  day  or  two  later,  after  we  got  back  to  Seoul, 
one  of  these  same  men  shunted  me  into  the  back 
room  of  a  small  Korean  store,  owned  by  one  of 
the  leaders  of  the  revolution.  We  sat  cross- 
legged  with  him  on  the  floor  and  drank  tea.  And 
we  talked  of  this  tremendous  spiritual  awakening 
of  a  country  that  a  few  years  ago  was  dead. 

My  queer  old  host,  pulling  at  his  thin  little 
beard  and  eying  me  with  friendly  glances,  was  a 
Korean  Christian. 

228 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

**More  than  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  Ko- 
reans who  have  taken  an  active  part  in  our  great 
revolution  against  Japan  are  Christians,"  he  said 
to  me  through  my  missionary  interpreter.  *'The 
Christian  Koreans  have  been  the  real  leaders. 
We  have  kept  the  fire  burning.  Your  American 
missionaries  and  your  dollars  have  built  schools 
for  us,  and  hospitals,  and  they  have  given  us  new 
hearts  and  fresh  hopes.  They  have  taught  us 
many  fine  things.  They  have  prepared  hundreds 
of  native  missionaries  and  teachers  and  doctors 
and  nurses  who  in  turn  will  carry  on  the  things 
they  have  learned  from  you.  Korea  could  never 
have  lifted  up  her  head  again  mthout  Christianity 
to  help  her." 

And  these  inspirers  of  unrest  were  the  same 
missic^iaries  whom  I  have  heard  laughed  at  and 
damned  a  hundred  times  in  steamship  smoking- 
rooms  and  hotel  lobbies  and  in  the  clubs  and 
streets  of  half  the  world.  For  it  is  distinctly  the 
smart  thing  in  the  Far  East  to  assume  the  su- 
perior attitude  over  the  missionary.  Somehow 
he  doesn't  fit  into  the  free  and  easy  gesture  of 
the  foreigner's  life  in  the  Orient. 

Then,  too,  he  gives  his  life  to  help  the  native 
peoples — and  not  to  trade  on  them  or  make  money 
out  of  them.  He  has  an  entirely  different  point 
of  view  from  the  average  foreign  business  man 
who  wants  to  make  his  fortune  and  then  leave  the 
**beggers"  to  the  next  foreigner  who  comes  along. 

229 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

These  men — and  even  the  consular  and  diplo- 
matic people — come  and  go ;  and  when  they  leave 
they  take  their  hearts  with  them.  Their  influence 
can  not  be  anything  but  negligible — they  're  work- 
ing primarily  for  themselves  or  their  own  govern- 
ments and  they  can't  possibly  give  any  great 
amount  to  the  native. 

But  not  so  the  missionary.  He  must  and  he 
does  give  everything — years,  dreams,  heart, 
hopes,  life,  everything.  That's  what  makes  him 
great  and  his  influence  tremendous. 

Not  long  ago  one  of  the  finest  members  of  the 
diplomatic  corps  in  Peking  said  in  an  address: 
*'The  American  missionary  worker  and  teacher 
and  doctor  have  done  more  to  gain  the  friendship 
and  respect  and  good  will  of  the  East  for  America 
than  all  the  business  men,  consular  and  diplomat- 
ic agents  who  have  ever  sojourned  here,  put  to- 
gether." And  he  was  a  diplomatic  agent  himself. 

It  is  there  in  China  that  you  really  see  what 
tremendous  effect  the  missionaries  and  their 
schools  and  ideas  can  have  on  an  ancient  and 
stolid  people.  When  I  first  went  to  China  I  didn  't 
believe  this.  I  resented  every  phase  of  foreign 
missionary  influence.  I  thought  it  was  a  brazen 
interference  in  the  intimate  life  of  a  people  who 
had  more  thousands  of  years  of  tradition  and 
custom  and  proved  civilization  back  of  them  than 
we  had  scores  of  years.  I  resented  the  mission 
boards  with  their  great  walled  compounds:     I 

230 


THE  LAMP  BEAEERS 

resented  the  whole  business  of  trying  to  force  our 
standards  and  ideals  and  civilization  on  a  people 
who  apparently  didn't  want  them. 

Then  I  took  a  trip  into  the  country  districts  of 
China.  There  were  mud  and  dirt  and  dust  and 
filth  every^vhere.  It  was  the  filth  of  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years.  And  there  was  disease 
of  every  imaginable  sort.  And  an  ignorance  of 
all  sanitation  and  modern  health  standards  so 
appalling  that  it  is  indescribable. 

Each  little  walled  town  was  like  all  the  others — 
the  great  walls  of  China,  with  the  village  walls 
themselves,  had  shut  out  all  that  was  new  and  fine 
and  necessary  in  the  new  world. 

For  endless  miles  and  days  I  jogged  through 
these  picture-books  of  the  past:  a  toothless  old 
woman  with  bound  feet  grinding  flour  at  a  stone 
mill  that  could  easily  have  come  downi  from  the 
time  of  Confucius;  a  forked  stick  plow  drawn 
by  two  mangy  donkeys — donkeys  that  might  have 
carried  stones  of  the  Great  Wall,  and  a  plow  that 
might  have  cultivated  grain  for  the  men  who  built 
it;  adobe  huts  with  mud  plastered  walls  copied 
after  the  models  of  a  thousand  years  past.  It 
was  a  panorama  of  long  ago  that  I  viewed — a 
panorama  of  strong,  virile  men  and  women  who 
had  turned  to  stone  in  their  tracks  and  could  only 
be  given  the  breath  of  life  by  the  warm  summer 
winds  blowing  from  the  new  lands  and  civilization 
of  the  West. 

231 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

In  these  few  days  that  I  lived  close  to  common 
China  I  grew  tremendously  fond  of  these  kindly, 
hospitable,  smiling  people.  They  are  great  and 
they  are  a  distinctly  superior  folk,  but  they  need 
us.  And  when  I  say  *'us"  I  mean  those  of  **us" 
who  are  willing  to  give  our  years  and  our  hearts 
and  all  our  hopes  and  dreams  for  some  one  else. 
And  that's  what  these  missionary  teachers  and 
doctors  and  workers  in  China  are  doing. 

On  this  trip  we  stopped  mostly  at  filthy  little 
native  inns,  but  several  times  we  were  invited  into 
homes.  Some  of  them  were  fairly  clean ;  most  of 
them  were  not — but  one  I  remember  was  immacu- 
late. That  was  the  home  of  a  Chinese  Christian 
preacher.  His  home  and  his  home  life  were  ex- 
actly what  you  would  expect  from  a  man  who  had 
been  inspired  by  the  ideals  and  customs  and  codes 
of  the  finest  Americans. 

There  were  no  bound  feet  around  his  house  and 
there  was  no  great-lord-and-master  man  worship, 
and  there  was  no  Wife  No.  2  or  concubine  No.  1. 
It  was  a  spick  and  span,  clean  little  Christian 
home — ^in  the  best  and  highest  sense  of  the  word. 

In  the  same  village  we  visited  the  tiny  mission 
where  they  held  services  on  Sunday.  Probably 
forty  or  fifty  of  the  native  Christians  gathered 
to  pay  their  respects  to  me.  They  asked  me  to 
talk  to  them,  and  I  told  them  pretty  much  what 
I've  just  written  here.  When  I  had  finished  they 
shook  hands  with  me  and  two  or  three  of  them 

232 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

told  me  with  great  pride  that  they  had  sons  in 
American  mission  schools.  I  recall  that  one  old 
fellow,  bursting  with  joy,  explained  that  he  had 
a  daughter  in  an  American  school. 

This  was  the  big  thing — schools  to  educate 
native  boys  and  girls  in  modern  ideas  and  new 
moral  codes  and  sanitation  and  medicine  and  all 
that  the  past  two  or  three  thousand  years  have 
given  the  world  in  comfort  and  right  living.  My 
missionary  companion  was  helpless  to  do  any- 
thing for  China  mth  his  own  hands,  but  he  could 
train  the  hands  of  ten  thousand  Chinese  youths  to 
go  out  into  the  highways  and  byways  and  slowly 
but  surely  break  dowTi  all  the  stupid  superstitions 
and  traditions  and  customs  of  the  dead  past  and 
give  them  instead  the  best  of  the  West. 

This  is  a  big  part  of  the  new  missionary  idea. 
Religious  proselytizing  only,  among  a  people 
bound  as  tight  by  traditions  as  are  the  Chinese, 
is  only  half  a  job  even  if  successful.  The  brand- 
new  model  missionary  w^ould  teach  young  men  to 
teach  China  modern  civilization,  modern  Chris- 
tian standards  and  ethics  and  codes,  modern 
science  and  medicine — and  he  could  rest  mighty 
certain  that  China's  soul  would  come  out  of  the 
process  all  right. 

After  all,  it  is  the  work  done  by  the  mission 
schools  among  the  student  body  of  the  ancient 
East  that  is  having  the  deepest  effect  in  the  great 
awakening  of  these  slmnbering  millions.     **The 

233 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

germ  carriers  of  unrest"  some  one  has  called 
these  brave,  fighting  young  students  of  the  East. 
And  that  is  what  they  are — bearers  of  the  disease 
of  freedom — disseminators  of  the  plague  of  na- 
tionalism— transporters  of  the  fever  of  revolt. 

No  one  can  possibly  write  about  those  rising 
tides  of  unrest  that  are  splashing  against  all  the 
shores  of  the  world  without  writing  about  these 
students.  They  are  the  very  heart  of  it  all ;  and 
they  are  the  hope  of  it  all. 

Without  their  youth  and  enthusiasm — ^without 
their  vision  and  strength — ^without  their  bravei*y 
and  determination  the  great  awakening  of  the 
East  could  not  come  about.  They  blow  the  pre- 
cious breath  of  warm  life  into  dreams  of  freedom 
and  make  them  come  true.  It  is  their  voices  that 
are  calling  the  old  tired  world  out  of  its  past; 
it  is  their  unfettered  feet  that  are  breaking  the 
trail  to  new  days  and  new  visions.  They  are 
happy  to  fight  and  to  die. 

I  can  hardly  keep  the  tears  out  of  my  eyes  even 
now  as  I  think  of  those  fine,  brave  young  students 
of  India.  To  go  against  the  established  thing,  to 
dare  stand  against  the  government  and  the 
dominant  race — to  dream  and  to  act  and  to  die  if 
necessary  for  their  own  people — this  is  what 
thousands  of  the  young  men  of  India  are  doing. 

In  the  great  Mohammedan  University  at  Ali- 
grath  in  Northern  India  the  student  body  with- 
drew   from    the    government    supported    school 

234 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

under  the  inspiration  of  the  Moslem  leader, 
Mohammed  Ali,  and  started  up  a  tent  school  on 
some  vacant  ground  near  by  the  walled  enclosure 
of  the  old  college.  Many  of  the  parents  objected 
to  the  great  movement  and  all  the  power  and  influ- 
ence and  weight  of  the  established  thing — of  the 
past — tried  to  break  the  flaming  spirit  of  these 
Indian  boys,  fighting  as  they  believed  for  a  New 
India,  a  free  India — and  failed. 

In  Calcutta  a  tall  Indian  boy  with  a  beautiful 
Arion  head  and  the  soft  grayish  brown  skin  of 
the  high  caste  Arion,  came  to  my  room  in  the  hotel. 
He  wore  very  simple  inexpensive  robes  and  there 
were  sandals  on  his  feet.  He  was  trembling  with 
anger  when  he  entered — the  hotel  elevator  starter 
had  made  him  walk  up  the  stairs  because  he  was  a 
native. 

He  took  me  over  to  the  square  near  his  college. 
There  a  crowd  of  poorer  natives  were  gathered 
about  a  soap-box  orator — a  youthful  student.  He 
was  preaching  "StvadasJii'^ — the  boycott  of  all 
foreign  goods  in  preference  to  native  makes.  He 
wasn't  stirring  up  enthusiasm  for  the  coming 
football  game — he  was  arousing  a  sleeping  in- 
articulate people  for  the  thrilling  game  of  free- 
dom and  liberty  that  was  about  to  be  played. 

And  I  can  see  now  a  great  colorful  crowd  of 
the  common  poor  of  India  gathered  on  the  sandy 
shore  of  the  gorgeously  beautiful  harbor  at  Bom- 
bay.    Never  has  such  a  great  wave  of  color — 

235 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

turbans  and  robes  of  white  and  red  and  greens 
and  blues  and  scarlets  all  blending  into  the  back- 
ground of  this  magic  bay — never  has  such  a  tide 
of  color  swept  over  me. 

Here  in  the  twilight — the  tmlight  of  the  world 
that  was,  it  seemed  to  me — these  same  youthful 
students  came  with  their  dreams  and  their  mes- 
sages and  their  words  of  inspiration.  It  was  a 
great  game  they  were  playing — a  game  that  made 
our  American  college  sports  seem  small  and  so 
trivial. 

And  the  Y.  M.  C  A.  foreign  secretary  has  had 
his  great  part  to  do  with  all  of  this.  Throughout 
the  East  <*Y"  men  have  exerted  a  tremendous 
influence  in  giving  life  to  the  new  ideas  of 
democracy  and  political  and  social  consciousness 
that  are  slowly  permeating  the  ancient  life  of  this 
quarter  of  the  world.  Their  schools  and  training 
courses  and  their  wide-open  meeting-rooms  have 
gone  a  long  ways  toward  awakening  China.  Many 
of  the  vigorous  young  Chinese  men  who  are  fight- 
ing their  way  into  the  new  political  life  of  the 
country  and  trying  to  uproot  the  old  Manchu 
trained  politician  are  Y.  M.  C.  A.  taught  and 
inspired. 

In  Japan,  Korea,  China,  Siberia — everywhere 
— the  Y  has  been  driving  in  its  licks  for  the  best. 
None  has  ever  told  about  the  magnificent  work 
of  the  organization  in  the  frozen,  forgotten  hills 
of  Siberia.     Not  only  were  countless  American 

236 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

soldier  boys,  scattered  in  small  groups  over  hun- 
dreds of  miles,  given  cheery  entertainments  and 
loafing-rooms  and  scores  of  little  services,  but 
the  Y  attempted  to  bring  some  little  dash  of 
pleasure  into  the  dreary  lives  of  the  Siberian 
soldiers  themselves. 

This  was  in  the  days  when  the  misguided  reac- 
tionary Kolchak  was  fighting  to  turn  back  the 
clock  and  return  to  the  great  landlords  their  con- 
fiscated estates  and  set  in  power  again  the  ousted 
czar  officials.  A  number  of  Y.  M.  C.  A,  secre- 
taries with  their  picture-machines  and  their  mov- 
able canteens  were  sent  to  the  discouraged  army. 
Little  by  little  they  worked  their  way  into  the 
confidence  of  the  common  soldiers  and  told  them 
to  fight  on  and  bravel}^ — for  democracy  and  com- 
mon freedom.  They  told  them  of  American  insti- 
tutions and  our  own  Revolutionary  War.  They 
thrilled  them  with  this  word  democracy. 

When  Kolchak 's  reactionary  advisers  heard  of 
these  Americans  who  dared  give  ideas  with  pic- 
ture-shows and  democratic  ideals  mth  hot  coffee 
they  summarily  boosted  them  out  of  their  army. 
I  say  boosted  because  it  is  distinctly  a  boost  to  be 
kicked  up  and  out  for  spreading  ideas  of  Ameri- 
can democracy.  I  know  a  lot  of  fine  and  pic- 
turesque things  about  Y.  M.  C.  A.  work  all  over 
the  world,  but  none  of  them  ever  made  me  quite 
so  proud  of  this  great  institution  as  their  being 
** given  the  air"  by  Kolchak 's  czarist  officers. 

237 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

It's  a  long  trail  from  Siberia  to  India,  but 
there's  not  a  foot  of  it  that  doesn't  feel  in  some 
indirect  form  or  another  the  influence  of  the 
foreign  mission  worker.  What  they've  been  able 
to  do  in  India  itself  is  tremendous.  And  the 
thrilling  thing  about  their  work  in  this  great  back- 
ward country  is  that  it  has  been  done  for  the  most 
part  among  the  lowest  caste  natives — the  poor, 
abused,  underfed,  despised  ''untouchables."  No 
one  else  but  foreign  mission  workers  has  ever  had 
time  to  give  them  more  than  a  kick  back  into  their 
mud  wallows  when  they  have  tried  to  climb  out. 

In  Egypt,  too,  and  all  the  Near  East,  mission 
schools  and  hospitals  and  missionary  influences 
have  made  deep  and  tremendous  impressions.  To 
these  ancient  and  backward  peoples  they  have 
brought  the  fresh  and  fragrant  breath  of  new 
hope  and  of  cleaner  and  happier  lives.  Their 
hundreds  of  schools  have  taken  the  thousands  of 
boys  and  girls  from  homes  of  ancient  days  and 
taught  them  of  the  New  World;  and  then  sent 
them  back  to  their  decaying  cities  and  villages  to 
show  by  precept  and  example  that  1922  is  a  little 
further  down  the  road  to  happiness  than  1912 
was. 

And  the  same  things  hold  true  the  world  over. 
With  their  hospital  school  they  have  sent  out  doc- 
tors and  nurses  to  conserve  life  and  lessen  the 
suffering  and  pain.  The  little  hospitals  and  free 
climes  have  done  much  of  this  work. 

238 


THE  LAMP  BEARERS 

I  recall  vividly  a  very  small,  old-fashioned 
clinic  and  hospital  in  Northern  Manchuria.  It 
was  the  only  one  in  the  whole  district,  and  the 
doctor  who  conducted  the  clinic  had  been  there 
for  more  than  forty  years.  It  was  a  down-at-the- 
heels  old  place  and  in  no  way  was  it  the  immacu- 
late, spotless  hospital  we  demand  in  America.  It 
was  dirty,  but  it  was  priceless. 

This  old  doctor  and  his  sweet  little  wife,  and 
one  or  two  Chinese  girls  they  had  trained,  ran 
the  whole  thing.  And  they  only  had  a  few  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year  to  do  it  with — not  enough  to 
buy  the  medicines  they  really  needed. 

There  were  no  clean  hospital  cots  with  pure 
white  linen:  there  were  just  long  benches  where 
the  patients  could  sleep  and  a  long  rough  table 
where  the  rice  that  the  ancient  one-eyed  cook  pre- 
pared, was  served.  And  the  old  doctor's  operat- 
ing-room would  have  brought  tears  to  your  eyes. 

But  he  was  doing  his  job.  He  was  saving  lives 
and  easing  pain  and  trying  to  make  people  a  little 
happier — ^poor  people  whom  the  rest  of  the  world 
had  forgotten.  He  wasn  't  bothering  about  souls — 
he  was  bothering  about  sores.  He  was  helping 
helpless  people.  He  needed  no  soldiers  with  bay- 
onets to  back  him  up:  he  was  spending  little  of 
his  precious  time  bothering  about  the  white  man's 
burden — he  had  something  else  to  do  with  his 
hours. 

And  I  imagine  if  a  certain  carpenter  of  Judea 
239 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

would  ever  happen  along  those  dusty  tired  roads 
of  North  China  He  would  stop  at  this  old  mission- 
ary doctor's  little  free  clinic  and  put  His  arm 
around  him  and  tell  him  that  his  was  the  great- 
est hospital  in  the  world. 
It  seemed  that  to  me. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE    WORUD's    UNDER-DOGS — A    CONCLUSION 

One  has  a  strange  half  foreboding  to  come  thus 
to  the  end  of  a  survey  of  a  world  of  real  people — 
to  take  one  look  backward  down  the  long  dim 
years  of  the  past  and  to  steal  one  swift  glance 
ahead  into  the  unknown  and  unbroken  trail  of 
to-morrow. 

After  all,  it  is  something  to  be  writing  about 
living,  breathing  people,  and  to  try  to  catch  and 
throw  on  paper,  in  black  and  white,  their  dreams 
and  their  aspirations — their  struggles  and  their 
battles.  It  is  a  tremendous  responsibility,  replete 
with  possibilities  for  good  or  evil. 

As  I  try  to  value  what  I  have  said  through  all 
these  pages — ^to  examine  my  own  point  of  view 
and  weigh  the  job  of  reporting  I  have  done — I 
feel  that  possibly  what  I  have  written  here  in 
the  chapter  on  Mexico  about  Felipe  Carrillo  of 
Yucatan  may  be  said  in  criticism  of  me  as  well: 
''He  plunges  ahead  by  instinct — he  has  no  back- 
ground of  radical  training  or  education,  but  in- 
stinctively takes  the  side  of  the  oppressed." 

I  might  as  well  admit  it:  common  people — 
Mexicon    peons,    Filipino    taos,    Indian    ryotSj 

241 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

Egyptian  fellaheen,  Siberian  peasants,  Chinese 
coolies,  Haitian  habitants — these  are  the  people 
who  interest  me,  and  it  is  their  struggles  and 
hopes  that  thrill  me.  I  have  no  concern  with 
unrest  and  revolution  except  as  it  touches  them 
and  their  lives.  The  philosophies,  the  theories, 
the  mere  study  of  great  political  and  social  and 
industrial  changes  mean  very  little  to  me — ^but 
better  homes  and  better  food  and  better  children 
and  education  and  new  hopes  for  common  mil- 
lions mean  a  great  deal  to  me. 

It  may  be  that  I  have  misplaced  some  little 
enthusiasm.  I  have  tried  very  hard  to  be  always 
the  observer,  always  the  reporter,  but  en- 
thusiasms will  creep  in  now  and  then.  And 
enthusiasms  make  sentimentalists  out  of  the  best 
of  us;  and  when  it  comes  to  the  future  hopes  of 
common  people  I  am  just  that. 

Yet  I  am  confident  of  one  thing:  the  seething 
unrest  of  the  East  will  bring  great  sorrow  before 
it  brings  great  good.  There  can  be  no  short-cuts 
to  any  real  advancement.  If  the  revolt  of  India 
should  by  chance  bring  an  early  return  of  self- 
government,  common  India  will  miss  the  fair  jus- 
tice of  the  British  raj.  She  will  miss  the  clean 
efficiency  and  honesty  of  the  British  administra- 
tion. She  would  be  better  off  for  a  generation 
or  two  under  British  rule — if  she  would  accept 
and  assimilate  the  cnimbs  of  self-government 
that  the  empire  is  giving  her.    But  if  she  wants 

242 


THE  WORLD'S  UNDER-DOGS 

freedom  courageously  enough  to  battle  for  it, 
then  I  am  sufficient  of  an  idealist  to  believe  that 
in  the  end  the  wanting  and  the  fighting  and  the 
dreaming  will  help  the  half  hungry,  half  clothed 
native  millions ;  through  learning  to  think  of  and 
fight  for  nationalism  they  will  learn  to  think  of 
and  fight  for  their  own  social  and  economic 
rights. 

I  can  not  too  strongly  emphasize  this  point — 
this  one  theory  of  revolution  that  I  have  indulged 
in.  Only  by  a  great,  deep  stirring  of  conscious- 
ness can  the  slave  complex  of  the  billion  under- 
dogs of  the  world  be  broken  and  a  real  spirit  of 
freedom  and  independence  be  substituted  for  it. 

It  probably  will  seem  a  very  cruel  thing  to  say 
but  if  I  were  the  great  molder  of  the  Universe  I 
would  not  turn  a  hand  or  pull  a  cord  to  give  the 
struggling,  submerged  peoples  of  the  world  their 
freedom.  It  is  the  dreaming  and  fighting  and 
sacrificing  that  make  them  worthy  and  prepare 
them  for  it. 

If  England  would  withdraw  from  India  at  this 
moment  and  give  this  great,  seething  half-conti- 
nent, mth  its  scores  of  divergent  castes  and  reli- 
gions and  traditions,  full  independence  there 
would  be  gray  days  ahead  for  India.  But  when 
the  dream  of  freedom  has  penetrated  into  the 
inertia  of  three  hundred  million  ignorant  Indian 
peasants  and  workmen  so  deeply  that  they  are 
willing  to  give  their  lives  for  it,  then  they  are 

243 


THE  EISING  TEMPER  OP  THE  EAST 

spiritually  ready  for  it — and  they  will  be  ready 
to  begin  the  long  fight  for  social  and  industrial 
justice. 

These  young-old  nations  of  the  world  must 
again  learn  to  walk  alone.  Some  of  them  will  try 
before  they  are  quite  ready  and  they  will  fall,  but 
they  must  choose  their  own  time;  we  can  have 
very  little  to  do  with  that. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  in  my  mind  but 
that  our  own  little  India — and  there  are  many 
who  will  object  to  this  designation  of  the  Philip- 
pines— would  be  infinitely  better  off  for  another 
full  generation  under  the  beneficent  supervision 
of  the  United  States.  Americans  in  the  islands 
who  claim  that  there  is  less  efficiency,  less  hon- 
esty, less  advancement  under  the  present  scheme 
of  native  government  than  in  the  old  days  of  un- 
divided American  administration,  are  unquestion- 
ably right — ^but  inefficiency  and  demagogery 
are  ever  the  prices  of  democracy. 

There  is  no  question  but  that  a  decade  ago  the 
Philippines  were  the  best  governed  and  most  effi- 
ciently administrated  lands  in  the  world.  The 
finest  citizens  of  our  republic  poured  out  the  best 
years  of  their  lives  in  honest,  intelligent  and 
idealistic  service.  No  city  or  state  or  govern- 
mental department  in  our  own  country  was  admin- 
istered more  efficiently  or  honestly  than  the 
most  distant  hill  district  of  North  Luzon.  But 
it  was  a  paternal  and  foreign  government  rest- 

244 


THE  WORLD'S  UNDER-DOGS 

ing  on  the  rule  of  force — and  this  can  never  be 
either  a  sound  or  a  rightful  foundation. 

When  Manuel  Quezon,  head  of  the  Philippine 
independence  movement,  announces — in  the  same 
words  that  I  have  heard  Indian  revolutionists 
state  their  own  case — that  "good  government  is 
no  substitute  for  self-government"  he  is  stating 
a  fact  that  Americans,  least  of  all,  can  dispute. 

These  slogans,  these  signs  of  discontent  and 
revolt,  are  real  danger-signals.  We  of  America 
are  less  guilty  than  the  others,  but  our  hands  are 
not  stainless.  The  whole  West  must  drop  its 
arrogance,  its  domineering,  its  superior  bearing. 

We  must  cease  to  look  upon  the  East  as  a  great 
field  for  exploitation:  we  must  think  of  the  East 
in  terms  of  striving  peoples  and  not  of  future 
markets.  The  East  is  tired  of  our  looting  and  our 
ruling. 

But  there  are  other  things  we  can  and  should 
do — the  world's  under-dogs  do  need  a  great  deal 
that  our  white  West  can  give  them.  They  need 
our  science  and  our  medical  skill;  they  need  our 
skill  for  organization  and  our  technical  ability; 
they  need  our  own  neglected  theory  of  the  broth- 
erhood of  man,  and  much  of  our  o^vn  gentler 
social  system.  But  they  don't  want  and  won't 
have  these  things  shoved  down  their  throats  mth 
bayonets. 

Slowly  and  after  a  terrible  cost  we  are  begin- 
ning to  realize  that  there  are  better  and  easier 

245 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

ways  of  gaining  our  ends.  Doctor  Cross,  the 
brave  sacrificing  medical  explorer  who  gave  his 
life  in  Vera  Cruz  in  an  attempt  to  rid  the  "hot 
country'*  of  Mexico  of  its  yellow-fever  menace, 
knew  one  way  to  give  the  lower  half  of  the  world 
the  best  of  our  civilization  Avithout  the  use  of 
threat  or  force.  He  was  the  new  type  of  soldier 
who  will  one  day  "conquer"  the  world  through 
kindness  and  gentleness  and  generosity. 

Teachers,  doctors,  mission  workers,  engineers, 
organizers — these  must  be  the  future  colonizers, 
the  bearers  of  new  ideas. 

After  all,  the  history  of  the  spreading  of  the 
white  man's  civilization  is  not  a  pretty  one.  It 
has  been  mostly  one  of  conquest  and  gain  and 
loot,  with  a  few  fine  mission  workers  and  teach- 
ers and  a  handful  of  sincere  civilians  trying  to 
undo  all  that  men  with  bayonets  and  men  dream- 
ing only  of  profits  have  done. 

And  these  men  mth  bayonets  and  these  men 
dreaming  of  profits  have  differed  very  little, 
regardless  of  the  time  or  of  the  flag  under  which 
they  conquered  and  looted.  None  has  been  a  con- 
queror or  an  imperialist  in  his  oAvn  eyes — ^but  each 
in  turn  has  pointed  the  finger  of  scorn  at  the 
other  fellow  and  accused  him  of  bad  faith  in  deal- 
ing with  weaker,  far-away  peoples. 

So  it  is  that  we  Americans  have  had  much  to 
say  of  the  British  in  Egypt  and  India  and  Ire- 
land, and  the  French  in  Indo-China  and  Madagas- 

246 


THE  WORLD'S  UNDER-DOGS 

car,  and  the  Japanese  in  Korea  and  China  and 
Siberia.  Any  of  these  accused  might  quite  justly 
say,  **Let  him  who  is  ^vithout  sin  cast  the  first 
stone" — and  suggest  that  we  study  our  own  little 
conquest  of  Haiti  and  Santo  Domingo  and  our 
interference  in  the  affairs  of  Mexico  and  the  tiny 
republics  to  the  south. 

And  it  is  high  time  that  we  all  take  stock,  for 
there  is  a  rising  temper  among  these  backward 
peoples  all  over  the  world — and  particularly 
among  the  billion  black,  brown  and  yellow  races 
of  the  East.  For  centuries  the  imagination  of 
the  Great  East  had  been  unstirred.  There  had 
been  no  ideals,  no  dreams.  A  billion  people  had 
been  marking  time  while  the  stream  of  civiliza- 
tion had  been  flo^ving  swiftly  in  the  Xew  "World. 

But  now  new  ideals  of  nationalism  have  lit  up 
the  imagination  and  hearts  of  these  peoples. 
They  have  been  stirred  from  their  great  coma. 
They  have  opened  their  eyes  and  are  stretching 
themselves  and  discovering  the  power  of  their 
numbers  and  of  their  years. 

They  will  gain  their  nationalism — nothing  is 
more  certain  than  that.  But  they  will  not  stop 
there.  If  the  fair  rule  of  the  British  in  India 
was  to  be  permanently  replaced  by  the  rule  of 
backward,  Oriental  maharajahs,  steeped  in  their 
ancient  despotic  ways,  I  would  find  no  thrill  in 
the  home-rule  dreams  of  India.  But  they  wiU  not 
stop  there. 

247 


THE  RISING  TEMPER  OF  THE  EAST 

I  shall  never  forget  what  an  Egyptian  fellah 
in  a  mud  village  along  the  sleepy  Nile  said  to  me 
when  I  reminded  him  of  the  cruel  conditions  in 
Egypt  before  the  British  came. 

''Yes,"  he  answered  with  set  jaw,  ''but  no  one 
is  going  to  oppress  us  in  the  future.  We  are  sick 
and  tired  of  being  the  under-dogs." 

And  this  to  me  is  the  great  story  of  the  Old 
East.  These  ancient  millions  mil  not  stop  with 
the  victory  of  nationalism:  they  will  go  on  and  on, 
dreaming  and  demanding  and  finally  gaining 
more  victories  for  themselves — for  the  peons  and 
the  taos  and  the  ryots  and  the  fellaheen  and  the 
peasants  and  the  coolies  of  the  world.  They  will 
gain  more  rice  and  better  homes  and  all  the  pre- 
cious things  of  real  freedom. 

And  those  will  be  glorious  days. 

THE  END 


MAR         1988   ^^^^^^^ 

HIGHSMITH  45- 102                                                PRIN  TED  IN   U   S.  A. 

. '^IB  H86  19: 
Hunt,  Frazier  ,  .^ .     ioo„>. 
The  ri^in'-^  temper  of  the 
Eas :: 


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